Marketing is a lot like exercising

This picture was taken nine years ago in in September 2015. I'm about to cross the finish line and get my half-marathon personal best.

The year before this picture was taken, I completed my first-ever half marathon. I tell the story quite often because I think it's a great analogy for business.

If you haven't heard it, here's the short version:

Until I met my husband, I didn't exercise at all, but he’s been running since he was a teenager. And every year since 2002, he’s completed the Great North Run.

In 2014, I casually asked him if he thought I could ever do a half marathon, and he told me I absolutely could if I trained. He suggested I enter the Great North Run ballot. If I didn't get a place, it was no loss. If I did, I could decide whether I wanted to attempt it. So, I entered the ballot and got a place.

I asked him what a respectable time would be, and he said anything under two hours was really good. So that became my goal.

I had six months to train. I worked out that to get under two hours, I needed to run all 13.1 miles at a pace of around 9 minutes per mile.

For my first training run, I set a target of 3 miles at a 9-minute mile pace. What a joke that was! My first mile was not even close to 9 minutes. And after 1.5 miles, I gave up, burst into tears, and walked home. My two-hour goal felt impossible.

But I’m a stubborn little thing, so I carried on training. And six months later, I crossed the line in 1h 59m 57s. I achieved my goal.

The reason I love this story is because it reminds me that you can achieve your goals (however impossible they might seem) if you are willing to put in the work.

Straight after completing that first half marathon, I said I'd never do another one.

The following year I did three (including the one pictured above).

2015 was the year I got married so I decided to continue running as it would get me in shape for the wedding. Not really sure why I signed up for three events, but I did.

I beat my previous year's Great North Run time by almost two minutes and then beat my time again a couple of weeks later in the Nottingham half marathon (pictured above). The third one was two weeks after the wedding. Training had been put on the backburner by then (because we were busy getting married), so it was slower than the others (but still a decent time).

Anyway, as you can imagine, it was a pretty busy year. Not only was I training for three half-marathons and planning a wedding, I was also working full-time in a job that required a lot of travel around the UK. As if that wasn't enough, my business had started to take off so I was also writing copy for clients around everything else.

When I look back at how much I had on, I wonder how I found time for anything. It just goes to show that you can get an awful lot done when you prioritise your goals.

Two months after getting married, I handed in my notice at work and went all in on self-employment.

Why marketing is like exercise

I often use exercise as an analogy for marketing because there are so many parallels. The main one being that if you want results, you have to put the work in.

But first, you need to decide what results you want - what are your goals?

With exercise your goal might be to get stronger, to improve your muscle tone, to increase your fitness levels, to lose weight or something else.

With marketing, the end goal is usually to generate more enquiries or sales, but you might have different goals to help you get there. For example, build a social media audience, build an email list, get traffic to your website, become known as an expert in your industry, generate a stream of referrals and so on.

Once you have your goals, you can work out the best way to achieve them.

Choose the right activity

Fortunately, you have loads of choices for which activities to do.

With exercise, you can do yoga, weights, boxing, running, cycling, swimming, dancing, climbing, team sports - the list is endless.

Marketing is the same. You can do social media, content marketing, blogs, videos, podcasts, networking, direct mail, events, paid ads, TV radio - the list goes on.

So the good news is you can usually find an activity you feel comfortable with (and might even enjoy).

Measure your progress

The other part of achieving your goals is measuring your progress.

The measure part is important. You need to measure the right things.

If your exercise goal was to get faster at running then you'd track speed because tracking your weight wouldn't tell you whether you were getting faster.

It's the same in marketing. If your goal is to generate leads, you need to track the amount of leads you are getting. Post impressions on LinkedIn won't tell you whether you are getting leads or not.

Maintain your progress

Once you've hit your initial goal, you might set new goals or you might decide you just want to maintain your progress.

So it might be that you get to a point where you are happy with your muscle tone, fitness level, or weight and you just want to maintain it. You still have to exercise, but you don't necessarily have to push yourself as hard as when you were working toward your original goal.

Marketing can be like that too. You can get to a point where you have built a good audience, are getting regular referrals, and are generating a good amount of enquiries. If you have no intention of growing your business further, then you might decide to just maintain your current state. You still have to put the work in - you still have to do some marketing - but it probably won't be as intense as when you're starting out.

But you don't stop completely. Because if you stop you'll start to lose the progress you've made - you'll stop getting results.

Consistency is key

That's the thing about marketing and exercise - it requires consistency. It requires you to put in the work even when you can't be bothered.

Skipping legs day every now or then or taking a week off running won't hurt your results too much over the long term, just as taking a few days away from social media won't put you out of business.

But the longer you stop for, the more you'll lose the gains you've made and the harder it will be to build back up.

That's why it's important to choose activities you'll stick with and be realistic about what you can commit to.

You wouldn't go from never running at all to deciding to run ten miles every day.

It wouldn't be realistic or sustainable.

Instead, you might start with five miles a week. You could spread it over a couple of runs or do one run a week. Then you can build up frequency or distance.

The same applies to marketing.

Going from doing absolutely nothing to posting on three social platforms every day, writing daily emails, blogging every week, making ten videos a month, and attending sixteen different networking events is not realistic or sustainable.

So you'd start with smaller goals - for example, three social media posts a week and one blog post or video per month - then increase your activity gradually. That way you're more likely to stick with it.

Posting with purpose

If you're looking to build up your social media content but are struggling to get any consistency, check out my brand new 30-minute video - Posting with Purpose .

It's completely free - you don't even need to sign up for anything.

Thanks for reading - that's all for now

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Lisa