Stop playing marketing Whack-a-Mole

You might have enjoyed the game of Whack-a-Mole as a kid. You might even enjoy it now when you take the kids to Timezone. But it’s not fun to play as a marketer. 

You know the drill. Everyone rushes to start posting on the cool new social channel. Or everyone diverts their attention to the wonder that is AI, trying to work out how to shoehorn into their marketing activities. Or the sales team needs a quick promotion launched to arrest a revenue decline or hit this quarter’s numbers. 

Not fun. And definitely not sustainable. 

Don’t be distracted by the moles

Let’s face it, you’ll never be rid of the moles that pop their heads into your life, but you can stop them from undoing all your great work with their latest demands on your time and attention.

The trick is to have a solid foundation or base, one that is guarded closely and treated as sacred by you and your team. It’s the non-negotiable activity that must continue in the face of every faux emergency or random brainwave or directive from on-high. 

And if it is ‘set and forget’, meaning you have created a buffer of activity or commitments that don’t demand a lot of your time, the activity can continue even if you end up dragged from pillar to post by those pesky moles. 

Control what you can

A good foundation for B2B marketers includes evergreen content, email nurtures and regular customer communications. Ideally all of it automated. You can even automate the creation of new content and emails (via outsourcing), so it avoids being swept up by internal distractions. 

The benefits of this approach are huge. It’s by no means flashy, and it might not win you awards and plaudits, but it will build momentum, trust, authority and a platform for growth. Best of all for you – it won’t lead to burnout.

You’ll never stop the incessant noise and distractions, and you won’t be ignoring innovative new ideas and potentially valuable opportunities, but you will have created a solid foundation on which to build with purpose. And one that can’t be easily derailed. 

So put down the mallet and leave the moles to others. You’ve got a marketing machine to build.