Consistency!

Argh!

So important, yet so difficult.

Maybe you've found that yourself .

I think we all know that doing marketing consistently is vital to avoid feast-or-famine cycles. Yet it's much easier said than done.

One of the keys, I've found, is to turn some of the simple but important marketing tasks you have into a habit.

By that, I mean that you only have limited brainpower and energy to put into your marketing. 

If you have to expend that energy rethinking the basics every time, you'll have none left for the big things that really do need your best thinking.

An example would be regular emails like the one you're reading now. Every week on a Saturday evening I sit down and write an email just like this one ready to add to my autoresponder sequence that sends out emails every Sunday morning. I've done it so often I get twitchy now if I haven't done it by late evening.

I don't have to think about when I'm going to send the email. I don't have to think about who to send it to or what sequence to add it to. 

I do have to think about the topic, of course. But by making everything else a habit, I've preserved my limited brainpower for the thing that's important. 

You can do the same with many other areas of your marketing. 

Instead of writing articles for your website or doing podcasts or videos when the muse takes you, do it on a schedule. If you meet someone at an event who could be a good prospect for you, you make sure you have a pre-defined set of steps you can go through to follow-up rather than having to think them through from scratch each time. 

The more of the basics you turn into habits or pre-defined procedures, the more consistent you get. And the more you can focus your energy on the genuinely new things you need to do.

That brings you better results in two ways.

Firstly, you don't “drop the ball” with the basic tasks. You market even when you're busy. You avoid feast-or-famine.

And secondly, you get better results from the tasks you put your extra energy into.

But what it takes is that initial focus and discipline to turn the basic tasks into habits