This featured article is brought to you by: Ally Anderson, Data-Backed Marketing Strategist, Founder & Lead Strategist of Akari Digital Inc.

Marketing starts out straightforward, right? Launch, market a little, grow a little, then market a little more. But when you know you want to scale, it’s like a new level is unlocked—and it turns out this one’s harder to beat. A few wrong moves can take your marketing from straightforward and scalable to all-consuming and energy-sucking faster than you can say ‘energy vampire’.

If your marketing feels like a monster right now, I’ve got you. This is a solvable problem and we’re going to start solving it right now! With a few do’s and don’ts, this post will help you figure out what went wrong—then start to monster-proof your marketing going forward.

You don’t need to market more if you market better.

It happens to the best of us. We realize we want to grow more. While we aren’t 100% sure how to achieve that, a little marketing led to a little growth, so it stands to reason that more marketing would lead to more growth. We get to work, creating more content, posting more consistently, and adding new funnels. Think more traffic, leads, and sales will follow.

But in reality, more marketing usually only leads to more stress. And less free time. And an increased feeling of dread toward your business. Because that “do more grow more” gets overwhelming pretty quickly. (And still does lead to growth plateaus!)

So fast forward a few months, and the moment of dread hits. We realize that instead of building something scalable, we’ve created a content-consuming monster of a business that relies on us to feed it.

If you want to scale—meaning grow your business without growing your time commitment to your business—then you need to break the do-more-grow-more cycle. And THAT means resisting the urge to add more to your marketing, and instead, focusing on doing the things you’re already doing—just better.

Scalable Marketing 101

A scalable marketing system is one where each individual platform, tactic, or channel is playing its role as well as it possibly can. So that, as a result, the entire system is as effective as possible—bringing in measurable, reliable, and repeatable results.

What does that look like? It could be something like a social media strategy that doesn’t take up ALL your time and effectively drives people to your freebie, effectively converting followers into email subscribers. From there, it could look like optimized email sequences that nurture your new subscribers and drive them to your website. And then, having a super-effective website that converts visitors into paying customers or clients.

That sounds like a lot, right? But think about it: Once you spend the time shoring up the freebie, email sequences, and your website, you can count on consistent audience growth and sales month-over-month. You’d have a baseline you can build on. All you have to do from scratch each month is create social content and maybe write a newsletter or two. 

So now that we’ve established that a scalable marketing system is the goal…how the heck do you build a marketing system like that? Or fix the un-scalable system you’re working from now? 

You start by considering these foundational do’s and don’ts!

DON’T jump into every platform

Just because a platform can work for your business doesn’t mean you need it. 

Your marketing will be more effective if you focus on a few platforms and create quality content specifically for them versus doing the bare minimum on every single one.

For all you doers out there, keep this in mind, too: Even if a platform really could be a great opportunity for your business, it might not be the best opportunity for you to pursue right now. Especially if it’s taking resources away from something more important.

What’s the right number of platforms for you to be on? It’s different for each business. But in general, you’ll need to be on at least one for each stage of your customer journey. (More on this below.)

DO make sure you’re on at least one platform for each stage of the customer journey

When you’re picking platforms to focus on, make sure you have at least one reliable one for each stage of the customer journey.

The stages of your customer journey are reach, connection, conversion, and retention. Some platforms that fall into each stage are:

1. Reach: Any platform that reaches new people and brings them into your audience.
   1. SEO blog posts
   2. Ads
   3. Social
   4. Podcast
2. Connect: Platforms that build trust and connection, and nurture your audience.
   1. Email freebies
   2. Email welcome sequences
   3. Newsletters
   4. Social
3. Convert: Platforms that put the right offers in front of the right people, and convert them.
   1. Sales sequences
   2. Funnels
4. Retain: Platforms that support a positive product or service experience, upsells, and/or retention
   1. Community groups
   2. Retention offers

So for example, a business might have a marketing system that looks like this: 

1. Reach: SEO blog posts around burning questions the audience has and Meta ads targeted at specific audience interests
2. Connect: Freebie with an email nurture sequence 
3. Convert: Sales sequence triggered from activity in the nurture sequence
4. Retain: Onboarding sequence and online community for customers

If your marketing isn’t getting you the results you want, I want you to start assessing these stages of your customer journey and paying attention to which ones are working effectively—and which ones aren’t. 

If there’s a “leak” somewhere, your growth will always be limited. No matter how many new people you reach.

(Pro Tip: Measure how well each stage is performing to identify any leaks!)

DON’T waste resources throwing spaghetti at the wall

When sales are down or something isn’t working as well as you think it should, it can be tempting to jump into action—creating more content, pumping more money into ads, etc.

But doing more, more, more is the opposite of being scalable. And throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks is ineffective. So first, just pause and take a deep breath.

Before jumping to solution mode, diagnose the problem by looking at the data.

DO measure and track what is and isn’t working

The only way to make sure the time and money you’re investing in marketing actually pays off is to measure its efficacy.

Marketing data lets you track how many people you’re reaching in each stage of the customer journey. That matters because if your marketing isn’t working as well as you think it should, you can diagnose the problem. And pinpoint exactly what you need to do to fix it.

Here are some examples of what to look at when measuring your marketing efforts:

• Measuring SEO: Google Search Console and Google Analytics
• Measuring Ads: Pixel or Conversion tracking, UTM tagging, Google Analytics
• Measuring Email Marketing: Email platform analytics, UTM tagging, and Google Analytics
• Measuring Website: Google Analytics
• Measuring Social Media: Platform Insights, UTM tagging, Google Analytics

DON’T give up on something if it fails or underperforms

I often hear “I tried XYZ and it didn’t work” or “That used to work for me, but it doesn’t anymore”. 

Instead of trying something once and giving it a pass or a fail, think of your marketing as a series of experiments.

So you want to try ads? Great! Treat it like an experiment.

• First, make your hypothesis: “If I invest in [Meta Ads] targeting [XYZ audience], then I’ll get more traffic and leads on my list.”
• Then, set a specific number that you’re trying to reach. A performance goal.
• Now, run your experiment.
• Use data to track your experiment as you go. 
• Review your data to see if you hit your target.
• If you didn’t, reflect on why. Update your hypothesis. And consider trying again.

Even if it doesn’t work out perfectly the first time, that’s okay! You’ll learn a lot from the experiment and the data. And next time, you’ll have better information and a stronger hypothesis. And that will get you closer to your goal!

DO continuously experiment, learn, and refine your marketing

Successful, scalable marketing comes from running experiments, refining, and getting you closer and closer to your goal each time.

And, in my experience, business owners that embrace experimentation experience faster growth and feel way less stressed than those that don’t.

It can feel repetitive at times, but it’s worth it. Because in time, you’ll have a tried, tested, sustainable, and scalable marketing system in place. One that brings you the traffic, leads, and sales you want—and doesn’t turn your business into an insatiable content monster, demanding to constantly be fed.

Scalable marketing starts when guessing stops

At Akari Digital, building scalable systems based on data and strategy is what we do.

That means instead of marketing based on gut feelings or trends (“Let’s try a launch” or “I heard on XYZ podcast that we should do this in our emails”), we make strategic decisions. 

Like this anonymized client example:

“We know that [Product A] is a great entry point for our customers and they love it. We want to get more people in that program. The funnel currently converts at X% and we’re happy with that. Let’s experiment with Y and Z to get more people into this program. With a budget of [whatever] we should be able to [double traffic to the funnel], which could increase sales by [50-100%]. 

Want to guess less and start making scalable marketing decisions for yourself? Start by downloading our Free Reach Calculator. It’s the place to start when you’re ready to figure out what’s working and what’s not in your marketing system.

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This featured article is brought to you by: Ally Anderson, Data-Backed Marketing Strategist, Founder & Lead Strategist of Akari Digital Inc.

Ally has almost a decade of experience in marketing and has been obsessed with data from day one—digging into metrics for every piece of content to figure out how she could make it perform better and get better results. After digging in deeper, Ally was shocked to learn that most business owners don’t use data at all. Or, they do their best with third-party reporting, not realizing that it doesn’t give the full picture.

As a fixer, Ally got to work and Akari Digital was born. Now, with the help of her team, Ally helps entrepreneurs make better marketing decisions so they know exactly where to invest their time, energy, and money to achieve measurable, predictable growth. Ally’s mission is to disrupt the do-more-grow-more cycle that keeps businesses stuck instead of scaling. 

>>>>>> Access Ally’s FREE Reach Calculator Here. This Reach Calculator has a step-by-step walkthrough video that tells you where to find & calculate your leads, traffic, and reach you need to hit your goals, and what to do with all the data once you have it. It’s time to get up close and personal with your marketing numbers. Grab the FREE Calculator HERE!

>>>>>> Book Data-Backed Marketing Strategy Consulting with Ally Here. Ready to finally have marketing you can measure, track, and rely on? Then you’re in the right place! Ally and her team create custom data-driven marketing strategies & provide you with a done-for-you marketing plan that gets you on the path to success for elevating your marketing. Learn more and connect with Ally here!

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