Most of the important things in life aren't rocket science. They're just difficult.

Most of us don't eat healthily or exercise enough.

Yet the problem isn't that we don't know about healthy food and exercise. We just never get round to it. Other things take up our time for exercise or we think “that one extra slice won't make much difference”.

“I'll start the diet tomorrow”.

And we never do.

Marketing is similar. Most of us know the basics. If we want a successful online business we need to communicate with our audience regularly with valuable, interesting information.

Yet most people struggle to do a weekly email or blog post.

Much easier to “work” by checking emails, facebook or twitter than to write. And then to say dolefully “I couldn't find the time to work on my marketing”.

Doing a training course on blogging or email marketing won't help. You already know the important 80%. 

You need to turn that knowledge into action.

And I think we can learn from the people who do succeed with things like diet and exercise.

Many people who suddenly start taking diet and exercise seriously do it because of a health scare. It jolts them into action.

Hopefully we don't have to have big scare in our business to jolt us in to taking our marketing more seriously. But we can do a health check and look properly at what the numbers tell us. Do we have enough new leads and clients to fuel our business in the future? Are we growing steadily or hoping for something to turn up?

Others who succeed in getting healthier do it through social support. They go to clubs or enlist the moral support of their friends and loved ones.

We can do that with our marketing too. Join a mastermind group and share our plans. Get feedback. Give them permission to nudge us when we're falling off the wagon.

Others turn their healthy lifestyles into habits. Always exercising at the same time every day until it feels stranger not to exercise than to get on and do it.

With marketing I've found that carving out time in the mornings works well. Don't go to your office or normal place of work. Find somewhere you can work alone and switch of emails and your phone and get on with your key marketing tasks.

Make it a habit.

Finding little measures that track your progress helps a lot too. You don't lose weight every day, it fluctuates. But you can track your steps and your food intake (I lost over a stone simply by tracking what I was eating in an app. Now I'm tracking my steps thanks to one of those fitness bands and it's already getting me out and about significantly more).

Similarly, sales take time to come in. And they can fluctuate seemingly randomly at times. But you can track your wesbite visitors, your new email subscribers, people taking action on your emails. And you can track your activities. Are you making the calls, sending the emails, writing the blog posts you need to hit your goals?

Add a bunch of those “healthy habits” together and all of a sudden your marketing starts to work. Without needing any miracle cures or crash diets!