Narrow and Focus Your Marketing

Taking on too many marketing activities is a common mistake made by many organizations. Exceeding your capacity will result in an environment of stress and failure and watered-down communications that are ineffective. Are you doing too much? Here’s a simple way to decide.

Create a resources map

To be realistic, you need to map it all out. Here's a template to get you started.

On the left, list out all the communications and marketing activities you plan to do in the coming months. Across the top, list the resources and people you have available to do them. Then just fill in what each effort will take. Make sure you’re being realistic about how much time and money you need to put to each item to make it effective.

What you’ll learn

Going through this exercise will help you identify if you have over committed anyone on your team or under budgeted for your activities. If you have, it’s time to bring on more help or remove something from your marketing plan.

Only do what you can do well

Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. For instance, a big social media campaign won’t be successful if you don’t have the staff to monitor and engage in social media platforms. Being selective in your choices will have a bigger impact than trying to be everything to everyone. Cut out the things you can’t do well and put your efforts in the areas where you can be most successful.

We all like to think we can do it all, but when you take time to map it out and put real hours and dollars to every effort, it’s amazing how much more clear your marketing strategy becomes. You’ll quickly see what you can or can’t sustain. And with that knowledge you can proceed in a way that is focused and effective.