Ep. 053: The 90-Day Rule of Marketing
It can often feel so frustrating to be doing the work and not seeing immediate results from it. But the good news is that the consistent effort you're putting in now will give you results 90 days from now.
The key is to pick a few marketing strategies you can implement fo 90 days, then see what worked best, and double down on that for the next 90 days. Don't overload yourself, but also don't give up too soon. There's a real reason why this works and I explain it and more in this episode.
LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED TODAY:
Get my free No-Sleaze Sales Method delivered right to your inbox: Get Instant Access Here
-
Erika Tebbens: Grow Marketing culture and sketchy MLMs have given modern business a bad reputation. It feels harder than ever to succeed as an entrepreneur, even though we've got an abundance of info and tech, right at our fingertips. If you feel frustrated, running your business, stress over your sales schools or are baffled by marketing strategies, you've come to the right place.
You deserve to run a successful sustainable business without spamming all of your friends or wasting time and money on marketing gimmicks. This is The Sell It, Sister Podcast, and you're going to learn how to make more money without complex systems or sleazy sales tactics. I'm Erika Tebbens, and I teach highly motivated female and gender expansive entrepreneurs that selling doesn't have to suck.
I've been running successful businesses. And teaching others how to sell smarter, earn more and create raving fans for over 15 years. And I'm excited to share what I've learned with you. If you want success without truly serving your clients, profits without any passion, or the next get rich quick scheme, I'm not your gal. But if you're all in and as an entrepreneur, want to make a difference with your work. And are ready to run a business, you're proud of then get ready to sell it, sister.
If you find that you're struggling with sales conversations, if they stress you out, or you find that you're always stumbling over your words, or you're not closing as many sales as you like, or you just are really petrified of coming across as that pushy salesperson. I have great news for you. I have eight totally free, completely.
A hundred percent free, no catch, no sleaze sales method guide just for you. So when you download this guide and I'll give you the URL in just a second, you are going to be able to start selling smarter this week. Yes, really. So what this is is a framework. A customizable framework that works, whether you sell a product or a service or both.
So this is not weird scripts that you have to memorize or anything really convoluted or complex. It's just an easy way to remember what to say, how to say it, and why to say it when you're having a sales conversation with someone. I think you're going to love it. I know. I do. I know it's worked for me for many, many, many years.
I know my clients love it too. It gives them a ton of confidence when it comes to selling. And that confidence translates to closing more sales. Right. So if you need this, if this is a tool that seems like it's beneficial to you, I want you to go to bit.ly/sellitsisterpodcast. It's all lower case.
And it's all one word. Again, that's B I T dot L Y, Bitly, essentially. Forward slash sell it's sister podcast. It's really, really quick to go through. But if you have any questions or anything, be sure to reach out. Because I want to make sure that you are a selling superstar.
Hey, and welcome back to The Sell It, Sister Podcast. Today. I am going to share something with you that is a really helpful tip I learned years ago. And I don't actually remember if I learned this from someone or if I just sort of figured it out, uh, through the course of running businesses, I don't really know. But that's neither here nor there because it's helpful and it works.
And it is the 90 day rule of marketing. Which is that whatever you do right now, or conversely don't do right now, will impact your business 90 days from now. So this is where, uh, I know in a pasts episode I talk about, um, consistency. Sorry I don't remember the name, the number of that episode right off the top of my head. But I think it's titled consistency is key.
Uh, but here is why I feel motivated to be consistent with my marketing efforts, even when it feels like, "Oh my gosh, nothing is happening right this second." And that is because I know that even if it looks like, "Okay, nothing's happening right now, I'm not getting any new clients right now," or whatever the case that, "If I just keep at it, things will be better 90 days from now."
And this is sort of hard because we are very used to like that instantaneous result, right? Like we want to join a gym and go for one week and then have like rock hard abs. Right? Or we want to like start eating more salads and then suddenly lose 20 pounds in, in a week. Right? Like we, we are just people who are used to, uh, having instantaneous things at our fingertips. Like what we want when we want it kind of a thing.
And that is not how a lot of things work. And one of those things is the world of business in the world of marketing. So I'm going to go way back to when I had my, uh, direct sales business. And this was, it was very clear to see this working there. Uh, in fact, that industry, especially if you were in, like, if you've ever been in it and you were doing in home parties, it's very, very, very easy to see exactly how marketing works in real time. And I'll give the example of, so let's say I know Sarah, right? So just for the sake of ease, let's say it's January, and I know Sarah. And Sarah hosts a party, a home party for me. And she has 10 people at that party. So three of the ten, now book parties of their own.
So one does February, one does March, and one does April. So now at each of those future parties, if there are 10 guests at each one and I get three parties from each, then a few months out, like you can see how, and I don't, you know, this is not visual, so no visual aid for this. And I don't, you know, I'm not going to like fully math it all out, but you can see how in 90 days from that point, so let's say when I get to April. So now not only do I have the party that was already booked in January for April. So I have one party on the books. But then I had the party in February. And then I have, you know, another party from there that is gonna go into April. And then I had the party from Sarah's party, and like the person who booked for March. So then I get another one for April. So now off of the one party in January, I have, let's see one from that initial party, one from the, uh, Second party and one from the third party. So now I have three parties already that are going to take place in April.
So right there, if, if I had a goal of five parties a month, I have already fulfilled that from just one party, right? It's the ripple effect. Now, if I'm doing five parties every month, you can see how the other four parties that I may have done in January. Even if I had one party where I only got one booking.
I am still moving my business forward. Right? So it, like, we would always say for people on our downline, if you are, if you really want to like, restart your business, right? If maybe you've taken some time away from it, or you've kind of just done like the minimum to stay as like an active consultant, or maybe you have been doing a couple parties a month, but now there's this incentive that you really want to earn and so you really need to ramp things up.
What we would say is like, work really hard once. Not like to burn out levels, but you know what I mean. Like, do do the work to front load things now, because those efforts now are going to impact you 90 days from now. Now in other businesses, like that's a very cut and dry one.
Like you can clearly see, see, even if you've never been in that industry, you can clearly imagine in your mind how that would work. That, you know, as you're meeting new people, connecting with new people. Booking new home parties. You can have that snowball effect to where you get to a place where you're like, "Oh my gosh, now, now I'm really going."
Now it's just all maintenance. Right? Kind of like when you're doing, you know, a fitness thing or like weight loss thing. Like you have to work to get to the goal, and then it's maintenance. So when I transitioned over from that to what I do now, I had to just trust that a similar thing would happen. And I have seen this, you know, countless times across many industries, even when I was in farming and we had CSA members. You know, it's, it can take awhile to like fill a CSA, which is like a subscription in case, in case you don't know, it's like a seasonal produce subscription.
It can take some time to build up your reputation and, and all of that and the returning client base, and then you get them into the CSA. But then what happens is, is like when you really deliver well and you serve them well, and you are selling good products to them, and they're happy with it, is then may start to become raving fans.
They sign up year after year. They tell their friends they're doing organic marketing for you. And it's this again, this amazing snowball effect. So what does this mean for you? So it means that you, instead of getting discouraged and instead of trying something for a week and saying, "Well, this isn't working, I haven't gotten any new business. Uh, I'm just going to give up. I'm obviously terrible at this. I suck. Nobody's interested in me." All those awful things that we say to ourselves, right? I want you to trust and believe and just keep being consistent with a few things. So does it mean do all the things you've heard me say that before, and I'll keep saying it.
This is not doing all the things. This is picking a few things and being super consistent and trust that it will transform your business 90 days from now. And also if you keep starting and stopping, if you keep, if you know, if you're being inconsistent, if you are just not doing stuff, you're not showing up, that it will also negatively impact your business 90 days from now.
So another analogy I love to think about, I've probably mentioned it in past episodes. I know I've certainly said this to clients. Is that one way you can think of it is like a train on the tracks, right? So marketing and getting out there and marketing your business is like a train on the tracks. It takes a lot of energy to get that train up to a full speed. Where it is full clip, you know, express train go in between stops.
And once it's up to speed, it's really hard to stop. So I like to think of it the same way. The first year that I had my business that I have now. The first year that I was doing marketing strategy and coaching. I, it was a lot of groundwork. It was a lot of, okay, I'm showing up every day, I'm doing a lot of work.
I'm making connections, I'm networking, I'm creating content. I'm, you know, putting out offers. Like I'm doing all these things. It was a lot of, of sort of like blind faith, right? And it's really hard. It's really hard in that moment when you're like, "There is not as much money coming in as I want there to be. But I am going to keep showing up anyways and trust that I am in the stage where I am getting my train up to speed."
And that once that train is up to speed, then it will be much, much harder to stop. And what this looked like for me in real life was that at about the year mark, maybe a little bit before that first year mark, I was really starting to pick up speed a lot. All of a sudden people were reaching out to me and asking me, "Oh, Hey, can you be on my podcast? Oh, Hey, can you be a guest inside my paid community? Can you be a guest inside my free community? Um, Hey, we need a speaker for this thing. Can you do it? Uh, Hey, do you want to collaborate on this?" Like all of a sudden, things were really happening. All of a sudden I had people in my life who were like, "I feel like I, I feel you're everywhere." And I'm like, "I'm not, I don't feel like I'm everywhere."
But like, "I feel like I see your name everywhere. I feel like I see people tagging you. I feel like people, I see people sharing your content. I feel like I see these events and things that you're doing." Right? So to the outside world, it looked like, "Oh, yeah. Like Erika knows what she's doing. Like Erika is your go-to person. Like Erika, uh, can help." And, but that, that took a lot of building, and a lot of consistency, and a lot of trust. So this is just my, this is my reminder to you. Now, if you, if you are like, "Okay, but I don't, I don't even know what I should be doing." That's a different conversation. Like if, if you don't know what you should or could be doing as part of that 90 day marketing plan, obviously reach out. You know, I love to hang on Instagram at @erikatebbensconsulting. Um, or you can go to erikatebbens.com and contact me through, because that is what I help people with is those, you know, 90 and beyond date, you know, marketing plans. So 90 day and beyond marketing plans.
Uh, but if there are things you are doing that you feel like are giving you traction, right? If there, if there are things in your marketing that you are doing that seem to be working. So maybe that is, "I'll just, I'll just say guesting on podcasts." Right? So maybe it's guesting on podcasts. And every time you guest on a podcast, you start to get more like inbound people. Or anytime that you speak in a summit, you start to get more inbound people. Or, uh, anytime you guest in somebody's group, you get, you get more like inbound people. If you know that, that is what is working for you, double down on it. Right? So I think, don't quote me on this. I'm not sure if like Gary V invented the term, like double down on what works. I know I've heard him say it.
Uh, but yeah, that, that is really crucial. So when I look back to the things that I do. And when I do this with my clients and my students where I'm like, okay, "Go, like let's go back and figure out, um, what has been working and then how can we double down on that?" That is where you end up not working yourself, silly.
Cause you can really see. So I know in my case, um, a lot of times that is, uh, showing up for other people's audiences. It's, uh, intentionally engaging with people on Instagram. And it's through personal connections. And so, even though, like sometimes, you know, like I I've started using LinkedIn a little bit more this year or, you know, trying out different things. Like I've, um, now been in some summits. And I have these other avenues that I'm trying out with marketing.
But I know if I'm really pressed for time, there are some really simple things that I can depend upon that work for me in my business. So there you have it, whatever, you know, if you know, what, what works double down on it. Map it out. Be super consistent. Uh, look at where you are now. Analyze it in 90 days, and you can do this for every 90 day period.
Look back and see what worked and what didn't double down on what works and then keep going forward and tweaking and testing and adjusting as needed. Uh, and if you're not sure what to do, obviously reach out to me. Uh, and then just know it's sort of like wash, rinse and repeat, every, every 90 days. And there will be days where you're like, "Oh, my gosh, I S I don't have any discovery calls and this is terrible. And I like, what am I doing wrong? I've made, I'm making all these like great connections, but I just, I don't even know." Uh, just trust that if you have, you know, if you are being consistent with your marketing efforts, if you are making new connections, if new people are learning about you and what you do every day or most days that 90 days from now, your business should look better. You should be closer to your overall goals. I hope that helps. Uh, I know that, um, it's just, it's something that I keep in mind when I start to feel frustrated, uh, or I start to feel impatient, but, uh, again, if you know, if you're listening, I love when people tag me on Instagram and their stories. So if you're listening, um, snap a picture, like do a screenshot and posting your stories. Tag me, @@erikatebbensconsulting, um, say hi, I truly love it as an extrovert. I, I love it when people say hi to me over there, and I appreciate you being here. It really means the world to me. As always, happy selling.
Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of The Sell It, Sister Podcast. If you loved it and you want more, be sure to subscribe so that you never miss an episode and then head on over to sellitsisterhood.com to join my free Facebook community group. And as your mama said, "Sharing is caring." So if you got a lot of value out of this episode, be sure to share it with your biz besties too.
Okay now, get out there and sell it, sister.
