Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign Hi there and welcome back to the Confessions in the Home Office podcast. I'm Wendy Hill, host of this podcast and owner of Market Momentum, a Greenville, South Carolina marketing agency.
[00:00:17] So today's topic might not be flashy and it really doesn't involve trends or hacks or the brand new platform that you need to chase, but it will move the needle in your business.
[00:00:28] I'm talking about consistency, specifically why consistency is not sexy, why it's so hard, and why it's the one thing that separates people who grow quietly and steadily from the ones who keep starting over.
[00:00:42] So while we don't talk about consistency more, it's because it's boring. You never see an Instagram reel that says this person showed up for a year straight with mid performing content and now they're all booked out.
[00:00:54] No. You see, I've already made a hundred thousand dollars in six months using this one weird email trick and dancing on TikTok with a ring. Light a dog. Download my free lead magnet about this and I get it. Results sell. But the truth is, most business wins happen behind the scenes in the quiet with repeated action. Stuff like writing weekly emails even when your open rates dip for a while, showing up online when no one seems to be engaging, following up again because the first message didn't get a reply.
[00:01:27] The people who are killing it, they're not just talented, they're consistent. They're willing to be repetitive, sometimes boring, predictable even.
[00:01:37] And that is what builds trust.
[00:01:41] So why is consistency so hard? So if we know it's powerful, why do we resist it?
[00:01:47] I just want to be real.
[00:01:49] Everybody wants a quick win.
[00:01:51] Everybody's addicted to novelty. We feel weird doing the same thing over and over, even when it doesn't feel like it's working.
[00:01:59] And everyone seems to have ADHD these days and you just want something to work quickly. And I think a lot of people are looking around at others and they think they see success.
[00:02:10] They're not really sure, so they're going ahead and putting themselves down.
[00:02:15] So I had a client once, really smart, really creative.
[00:02:19] She just kept changing her strategy like every two or three weeks because it wasn't getting traction. It wasn't getting traction.
[00:02:26] She'd post on Instagram, she would do a quick video, she'd get 20 likes, and then she'd say, oh, I need to change everything.
[00:02:34] So I had to tell her, no one even knows who you are yet. You don't even stay in one place long enough for people to recognize your face, let alone trust what you have to sell.
[00:02:45] So Consistency doesn't always give us instant feedback and that can really mess with our heads.
[00:02:51] You know, you decide you want to lose weight and you want the scale to start dropping the next day. It just doesn't happen that way. It's kind of the same thing with marketing. Once you have an idea and you're ready to get going, people have no idea. And when you start telling people about what you're doing, it still takes a while for them to understand and remember what you do.
[00:03:12] We all start wondering, is it even worth it? It is. You just need to stick with it longer than your inner critic wants to.
[00:03:19] So what does consistency really mean and what it doesn't mean?
[00:03:23] Consistency is not perfection.
[00:03:26] It is not about never missing a post or sending a newsletter every single Thursday at 10 o' clock in the morning just like a robot. It's about showing up enough to stay top of mind and to build momentum.
[00:03:40] You really want to earn the trust that makes people want to work with you, refer others to you and buy from you.
[00:03:47] So what does this actually look like?
[00:03:50] Maybe it's posting on LinkedIn twice a week with some youthful, useful, youthful, can't talk today useful insights. Maybe it's sending your email list something every two weeks, even if it's something short and simple.
[00:04:03] Maybe it's committing to showing your face on stories every Monday to share what's coming up in your business instead of just staying behind the scenes.
[00:04:12] So none of that is super hard, none of that is earth shattering. But over time it just becomes your collection of work. Over time you have a lot of content, you've done a lot of things. And you may say, but that's not, that's not translated into sales, not yet.
[00:04:28] It builds visibility, it tells people, I'm still here. I'm not a one hit wonder.
[00:04:33] You can trust me. We all know these people that we see online and they hit it hard for a couple of weeks or maybe even a month, month and a half, and then they disappear again.
[00:04:43] And you think, you know what they, they just, maybe they have something going on, but it's a pattern and you don't really know if you can trust that they'll show up again.
[00:04:52] And so consistency is really important.
[00:04:55] And it's okay if your version of consistency looks different than someone else's, just make sure it's something you can sustain. If you say, I'm going to go live twice a week, can you really go live twice a week? Or I'm going to put up a time lapse video of what we're working on every Thursday. Can you really do that? Do you have the staff to do that? Do you have somebody who can get that together and get it out?
[00:05:20] Don't over commit. Do what you can do and if you need help, get some help.
[00:05:25] So if doing something daily is too much, switch to weekly. If you, if weekly's too much, go bi weekly. Just pick something and do it.
[00:05:34] So here's kind of a real world confession. The one week wonder. So I had a client who came to me really excited to launch his new offer. He had all the energy about it. He had been writing things about it. He sent it to me to get it cleaned up and put graphics to it.
[00:05:50] And he had new brandings and new colors. He wanted to put something on his website and, and he said, we're gonna post about this all the time. Every time we send out a newsletter, I want something on social media every week for like the next three or four months. Great. This is great content. This is something that's gonna be useful for some of your audience.
[00:06:11] And then we posted for about two weeks. And the next meeting he said, we had one inquiry and it didn't work out, so we're just not gonna promote that anymore. And I thought, well, you know, you don't need to change the offer. It's a good offer.
[00:06:27] Maybe you, maybe we need to do it a little bit longer or maybe we need to post it across platforms, even though we thought it would really just appeal to one.
[00:06:36] And I had to remind you, didn't even give anybody time to process what you do.
[00:06:41] Most people barely saw the posts that you made, and the ones who did probably forgot a few minutes later because that's how content works. So you have to be consistent. You have to keep putting it out there.
[00:06:53] So we reset and started promoting it again and things are starting to get traction. But we're not just doing kind of a one and done. We're saying we need to keep doing this the rest of the year and mix it in with the content.
[00:07:07] So posting chaotically for attention, that doesn't work. You need to show up consistently with value.
[00:07:16] And you know what will happen? More people will start responding. More people will start telling other people about what you're doing than may share it.
[00:07:23] But over time.
[00:07:26] So inquiries are starting to pick up with my client. Their confidence is growing with things. They're learning that one and done or two and done is not enough.
[00:07:36] Consistency gives a message a chance to land.
[00:07:40] So here's a couple of ways to build real consistency.
[00:07:44] Here's Some things you can do starting this week.
[00:07:47] Number one, I want you to pick one channel to commit to. If you don't have someone helping you with your marketing or you just have someone internally who's working on other things too and they help you with marketing a little bit, just pick one channel to commit to. You don't have to be everywhere. You can pick LinkedIn if that's where your audience is. Maybe it's Instagram, maybe it's Pinterest. I met with a prospect last week, and Pinterest is huge for them, and you don't hear that very often, but their Pinterest look fantastic, and that's something they've been working on for years.
[00:08:18] Maybe you work on LinkedIn, maybe you started a podcast and you let it kind of. Kind of fizzle out, but you really liked it. And maybe that's where you need to focus and you need to say, this is where I'm going to show it regularly. And then you need a batch where you can. Let's say you do a podcast batch two episodes at once, sit down and write more than one email while you're at your desk.
[00:08:42] So ride the wave when you have that creative day. You know, Sunday afternoons are big for me to just kind of make a quick list and start jotting things down. And I don't have the pressure of meeting and phone calls and the schedules. And it's kind of nice to just be able to crank out some things and know that I'm not going to be interrupted and do some great thinking then. So batch where you can. Maybe Sunday is not your day. Maybe it's in the evening, maybe it's over lunch.
[00:09:09] And I want you to track progress and not perfection. Just keep a simple tracker. How many times did you post this month? How many times did you email this month? How many times did you put up a video?
[00:09:19] Did you send your newsletter?
[00:09:21] And that's great, That's a win. Don't let, oh, I missed a week, become, well, I'm just going to give up. Just get started and go or get started again.
[00:09:32] So I know it's tempting to believe that success comes from the next big idea, or the perfect funnel, or that one post that went viral, or the post is so creative and so different from everybody else's.
[00:09:43] But more often it comes from small, repeated actions.
[00:09:47] Show up, say something helpful, do it again.
[00:09:51] It's not sexy, but it works. You don't need to hustle harder. You just need to stay in the game.
[00:09:57] And honestly, that's the most underrated marketing strategy there is.
[00:10:03] So that's it for this week on the Confessions in the Home Office podcast. If this episode helped shift something for you or made you finally say, I'm going to send that email. I'd love to hear from you. You. You can tag me, you can send me a dm. You can send me an email. My email will be in the show notes. And if you haven't subscribed yet to the podcast, I would love it if you would hit the subscribe button so you don't miss next week's episode.
[00:10:26] So stay calm, stay consistent. If you live in the south, stay cool, and I'll talk to you soon.
