146: How To Stay Consistent When Marketing Feels Like A Chore

 Welcome to the Shoot at Straight podcast, where honesty meets heart and real talk actually means something. I’m your host, Sabrina Gebhart, and each week we get vulnerable, practical, and just a little bit bold so you can feel seen, supported, and ready to take the next step in your photography journey.

Let’s go. Welcome back to the Shoot Straight podcast, my friends today. We’re talking about things that should work for you instead of exhausting you, and specifically we’re talking about marketing. Here’s the truth. Are you ready? There have been plenty of times in the past 14 years of being in business where I have completely fallen off the marketing wagon.

There have, there have been lots of times where I just said, you know what? I, I just can’t. I stop showing up on social media, or if I do show up, it’s nothing consistent. I. I drop the ball on the emails, I stop blogging altogether. I’m not reaching out for any collaborations, I’m just not doing anything. I just stop showing up and marketing and that happens.

And some of those times were completely understandable seasons when life got really hard and I needed to set something down. Okay? And I want you to hear me say that there are times in life and seasons we go through where we need to set something down. And that is okay. That’s not what we’re talking about today though, honestly.

Most of the times I can remember ignoring marketing is when I felt overwhelmed or paralyzed by the thought of it. Like I didn’t know what to talk about or how to say what I wanted to say or how to get the results. So I just stopped doing it ’cause it didn’t feel good because it felt too overwhelming and too hard and too complicated, and I didn’t know what to do.

And so I was just like, well, screw it. I’m just not going to do anything. That’s the majority of the times over the years when I have just set it all down and said, nevermind, this experience is normal. I hear about it all the time. I. If you feel like you’ve been in that season before or you’re in that season now, there’s nothing wrong with you.

Again, what you are experiencing is normal. It’s normal to fall off the wagon. Sometimes life gets busy. Sessions slow down. Creative energy tanks, we feel drained. But what if I told you that consistency doesn’t have to mean showing up constantly, doing your marketing constantly. Why does marketing feel like a chore?

That’s the question. There are seasons where marketing feels like a chore and we don’t wanna do it. So we either set it down altogether or we try and power through and it doesn’t feel good. So why, why does marketing start to feel like a chore? I. It can feel like it’s something that we’re doing because we have the pressure to do it.

Instead of being excited to do it, there’s this intense pressure we put on ourselves to perform or to do it right or to get certain results, or we have to do it ’cause everybody else is doing it and there’s no like passion or creativity or fun or ease behind it. It feels like a chore. This is something that I see show up a lot for women, especially when we think about social media, especially when we think about social media and there’s just so much pressure to show up.

I. Pressure to be perfect, pressure to perform, pressure to post all this stuff all the time, to do all the trends, to do things that all the gurus are telling us to do. And yes, social media can absolutely help your business, but I don’t want you to rely on it because that’s when it starts to feel draining.

Like when you are holding on, like social media is your lifeline and you couldn’t possibly give it up or stop showing up there because then your business would just burn down and you’re holding on with that like tight grip energy. That’s not what I want for you. I. What if you shifted to having a marketing plan that gives you the opportunity to show up on social media with a specific goal?

Like what if you changed your mindset about why you were using social media instead of making sales and getting inquiries, your goal was to grow your email list. That changes the energy, that changes how you show up there when you’re showing up there. With the hopes of getting a couple people on your email list every single week, instead of getting inquiries or paying clients every week, the energy is totally different.

And might I add the ask for our followers is much lower. You are way more likely to get people to click through onto an email list then you are for them to send you a DM to wanna book a session. It’s just, it’s a smaller stepping stone. So what if you changed how you thought about it to take the pressure off?

What if you shifted the goal for social media? And here’s the thing, you may also not even have a goal for social media. Maybe that’s part of the problem is that you think you have to show up a certain way, a certain amount of times doing certain things, and so you’re doing it and going through the motion without ever stopping to think about what’s the end goal here.

So either giving yourself a goal or shifting the goal from sales to email leads. Could potentially take a lot of the pressure off, and we’re gonna talk about this more in a minute. Another reason why marketing starts to feel like a chore is you’re just trying to do too much. You’re trying to do too much or follow, or formula, so to speak, that doesn’t like fit for you in your season of life or with your personality or your interests.

And you’re, you’re trying to show up all the places and follow all the trends and do all the things, and it’s just too much. It’s just too much. That can be another reason why it feels like a chore. You realize that every single week, you only have a certain amount of hours to work on your business. And when you feel like you have to be all the places doing all the things, you feel like all you’re doing in your business is marketing and, and then you’re stressed out because you’re, you’re falling behind on your editing and your client communications and you’re not getting to those other special projects, and then you’re, you’re losing time with your family that you swore you weren’t gonna do because you need more time to work, and it becomes this nasty cycle, right?

Marketing can feel like a chore when you’re trying to do too much. Another reason is that you’re unclear on your messaging or who you’re talking to. You’re screaming into the void. You don’t know what you’re saying, what the goal is, how to speak to her, ’cause you don’t even know who she is when you don’t know who you’re talking to.

Marketing is real tricky. You don’t know where to find them, what they’re interested in, what they’re gonna respond to. And when something feels hard, we don’t do it. But when you’re clear on what to say, you’re not afraid to show up anymore. It doesn’t feel like a chore to show up anymore ’cause you know exactly what to say.

Doesn’t that sound better? This is probably the biggest reason why marketing feels like a chore that I have seen in the last, let’s call it year. You don’t see instant results. You don’t see the instant results of your marketing effort, and so you’re just assuming it’s not working. We crave the dopamine hit of success and results, and when those things don’t happen, we get frustrated and we stop.

Often what I see is that people are looking for results in the wrong places. Again, I use that social media example, but we can apply it to all of them. It’s not about getting a lead, getting a contact form, or making a sale all the time. It’s not. I know that’s what you want it to be, but it is not.

Marketing results are often growing your email list, growing engagement, growing conversations, traffic based data. It is super-duper rare for someone to enter your world for the first time and immediately book a session and pay you a bunch of money. It happens, but it’s rare. Most of your marketing is going to be building relationships and laying a foundation so that when they are ready for what you have to offer your sessions or if you’re another creative, whatever it is that you offer, and when they’re ready, then they buy.

It’s not as instant. So we need to stop putting all the pressure on quote unquote things working by getting payments, seeing those kinds of results, and start focusing more on the engagement and the traffic based data as results. Marketing has this negative connotation where it feels like a chore really often for a lot of those reasons, and honestly, more.

And the emotional like junk that comes up on the other side of that, the emotional spiral that goes with it is this, we have guilt that we’re not doing enough, and then we have shame because it’s not working right? There’s the guilt of I’m not doing all the things she’s doing, I’m not showing up in all the places.

And then there’s the shame over. Well, where I am showing up and what I am doing, quote unquote, is not working because we’re looking at the long, at the wrong results, the wrong data. And then that leads to, we just avoid spending any time on marketing because why freaking bother if we’re frustrated and have this guilt that we’re not doing enough and we have the shame ’cause it’s not working anyway, then we just avoid doing it because who cares?

Right? What’s the point? And then what happens is we become invisible. We become invisible, we stop showing up, and therefore our leads stop finding us. And then it’s the whole cycle again of why am I not getting leads? What am I doing wrong? It must be me. None of that stuff is true. We’re focusing on the wrong things from the get go.

Do you see how this negative spiral, this circle, this nasty mindset comes from thinking that we’re not doing enough and then it just leads to everything else, right? What if you could have a mindset shift that would just really change all of that for you? What if you could, instead of thinking marketing is a to-do list and a very lengthy one at that, what if you started to focus on building relationships?

Relationships are lasting. Relationships create clients who inevitably stick around and rave about you two. Everyone they know. You don’t need to market every single day if that’s not feasible for you. If that doesn’t feel good for you, if you are not in a season where you have time to do that. You do need to market intentionally.

So here’s a just a handful, a sprinkling of examples of what like a sustainable consistency can look like for you. Maybe you just have one really strong Instagram post a week, really well thought out piece of content. Maybe twice a month you are sending an email to your list. And it’s not just selling it’s connection, relationship building with the people on your list.

Maybe you have a monthly theme or a campaign, let’s say, focusing on what’s coming up for your business, and then you lead your audience into that offer of what’s coming, and then maybe you decide to show up in stories three times a week with intention. You’re going to talk about the thing that’s coming up, or talk about your email list, or talk about the thing you posted that week.

Doesn’t that seem so much more attainable than trying to be all the places all the time, every day with every trend. Something that simple and that small is extremely consistent and can really create sustainability where you show up with a better energy, you see the right results, and it feels good. Not to mention you’re not spending all your time spinning your wheels, right?

I want you to think of, uh, I’m gonna give you a couple of tools, uh, tools and habits. Let’s say we’re gonna lump those into one category to help you support this sustainable consistency. I. Number one, have you taken my marketing personality quiz yet? I’m going to have it linked in the show notes. If you haven’t taken it yet, why?

It’s like a handful of questions. It’ll take you less than three minutes. On the other side of it, I know you hear the name and you’re like marketing personality. Who cares? That’s cutesy. It is cutesy, but on the other side of it, it’s going to give you clarity on what your strengths are and also what your weaknesses are.

I want you to lean into your strengths and what feels good, and I want you to find ways to work around your weaknesses. It’s gonna make your life easier. So if you haven’t taken that quiz yet, do that. Number two, batch, batch, your marketing content creation. And when I say content creation, I’m talking batch your emails, batch your blogs, if you’re gonna write them.

Batch your social media, however often you’re going to post. And if you wanna go back to that simple example I shared earlier of one caption a week, that’s four in a month, two emails a month. A theme for your month, and then three stories a week. You guys, that’s so little content as tiny. Create that in one day and then you don’t have to think about it for a month.

Create it in one day. Why? Because when you allow yourself to get in the flow of marketing, it is so much easier. And what you are writing and saying and how you’re showing up is more intentional. What happens when your marketing is more intentional? You get better results. Batch. Then use some like content buckets or themes that you can regularly pull from.

This is gonna remove you from like the decision fatigue, because you can go to your list, you can go to your content bank, you can go to your bucket bank and be like, okay, I. I know my audience loves it when I talk about my stylist or when I share stories about my crazy toddler, or when I share book reviews of what I’ve read recently.

So you can always sprinkle that in, right? When you have those themes or buckets or lists of content, the decision fatigue and not having it is huge. It’s huge. Um, another thing that’s gonna help you is to repurpose what’s already working. If you sent an email a couple months ago and you got lots of replies and lots of good feedback, take that email and turn it into some social media content.

Take what’s already working for you and repurpose it. Let’s not reinvent the wheel. My friends, same thing, goes with blog posts into captions or blog posts into emails. Like everything can repurpose, be repurposed into everything else. Another thing, and this is, this is a little bit on the mindset, but pay attention to what feels good, not just what performs.

It can be really tempting to, you know, create a reel, and if it does really well, we’re like, oh, well I guess I need to do more of that, even though it doesn’t feel good, and I don’t want you to necessarily do that. I want you to create the content that feels good. Not just focusing on what performs. And again, this is where the marketing quiz can come into play, because if you’re not sure what’s natural for you, it’s going to point you in the right direction.

And then here’s the last tip I have for you. Create before you consume specifically for social media, when you are sitting down to batch your content for the month or do it live on the day of whatever, however you’re gonna go about doing it, create your thing before you start scrolling. There is nothing that is going to kick you into imposter syndrome faster than consuming.

First, open the app, create the thing you set down to create, post it, and then you may consume other things. Create your stuff first. So in my course marketing that attracts, I teach you five organic marketing strategies for photographers. Okay? And then at the end of the course, I show you how to build your own personalized system so that you can rinse and repeat.

You’re not having to reinvent the wheel every month. Doesn’t that sound awesome? Honestly, my perfect suggestion is go take the quiz, learn your strengths and weaknesses, and then grab the marketing course so you can take it a step further and learn these organic strategies from start to finish so that you understand them, and then you can choose, pick and choose what you’re going to do for your marketing plan every single month.

That’s what I want for you. I want you to have this empowered solution for your marketing plan instead of just trying to wing it and copy what everybody else is doing all the time. Again, I want you to have this repeatable, customized, unique for you strategy. I want you to be able to show up consistently without having to hustle all the time, without having to do the heavy lifting of coming up with stuff all the time because you saw somebody else.

Like I just, I want you to get off that. I want you to get off that hamster wheel. It can feel so simple. It can feel so fun. It can feel so easy when you do what feels natural to you. I want you to feel good about your marketing. Again, I don’t want you to ghost your audience. I don’t want you to be invisible.

I want you to feel good about it again, so that you can build those relationships with your ideal clients and then convert them into buyers when the time is right. And it really can feel that good. Your dream clients, your ideal clients, they don’t need constant all the time everywhere. They just need to connect with you.

It really is that simple. They just need to connect with you. So I would love to invite you to check out both the quiz and the course. They’re both gonna link in the show notes and. Here’s a fun thing I wanna tell you before we wrap in just a couple weeks, I’m going to share a podcast episode where I’m answering your questions.

Audience questions. Okay. I’ve never done this before. Um, I’ve done it in different ways over the years, right? I do q and as in all of my programs with my members and my students. I’ve done q and as on Instagram, like with the question box, and years and years and years ago. I, I would go live on Instagram and answer questions, but I’ve never done it on the podcast.

So I’m really, really excited. So if you have ever wanted coaching on something specific to you or you’ve been curious about something, would you pop over to Instagram and send me a DM with your question? And I would love to load it into the pile of questions to answer in that upcoming episode. That would be super, super helpful for me.

So I can’t wait for you to send me a message. I will be waiting. That’s it for today, my friends. Uh, thanks for being here. As always, thanks for spending a little part of your week with me, and I will see you next week. Thanks so much for listening to the Shoot It Straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode at.

Sabrina gehart.com/podcast. Come find me and connect over on the gram at Sabrina Gehart Photography. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you hit that subscribe button and leave me a review. Until next time, my friends, I. Shoot it straight.