Do you ever get stuck?

After well over 10 years of doing my own marketing and constantly trying to create new content that you'll find useful, I have to admit I often get stuck.

Sometimes it feels like I'm never going to have another good idea.

Or that I've already told you everything I know. At least the useful bits :)

But, of course, neither of those things are ever true.

There are always more ideas. And always new insights to share. Or new ways of presenting old insights that makes them fresh again.

Here are two things I do when I've got that stuck feeling when it comes to marketing:

1) Going back to basics always helps.

Back to basics means reviewing the big problems, issues, goals and aspirations of my ideal clients. And then thinking to myself “what could I say that would help them with one of those?”

Something pretty much always comes up from there. If it doesn't step 2 should help.

2) Thinking of my own experiences with similar problems or goals.

That's where this email came from.

If I have a shortlist of problems, issues, goals and aspirations but I can't immediately see a great idea for an email or blog post or other type of content then thinking about my own experiences with those issues almost always does.

What do I do when I have that problem? Can I think of a time when that happened to me? And what did I do?

I know I'm onto something when I feel just a little bit reluctant to tell the story. That means it's a relatively painful memory, or it highlights a mistake I made. And those stories are all the more interesting and insightful.

Could you follow those two simple steps when you get stuck with your marketing?