117: What to Do About Marketing Overwhelm
Welcome back to Making Good, the podcast for small businesses who want to make a big impact.
I’m your host, Lauren Tilden, and this is episode 117.
Something that almost every small business owner experiences from time to time is OVERWHELM.
And there is perhaps no part of our businesses where we are more likely to get overwhelmed than with marketing. In a world where every day there are new platforms, strategies, tactics, things we “should” be doing… it’s a real accomplishment NOT to get overwhelmed.
For me, here’s what marketing overwhelm feels like:
It’s when I feel like I have so much on my plate, and too much on my mind, and I have this feeling like something’s gotta give…. It usually comes from a place of overcommitting myself to doing more than is actually possible given my time, resources and energy. Maybe I created a marketing schedule that was simply NOT attainable based on my bandwidth, so I’ve set myself up for failure.
And so. Today’s episode is all about marketing overwhelm… what it looks like, what to do when you find yourself in this space of overwhelm, and how to prevent yourself from getting overwhelmed in the future.
Let’s get into episode 117.
What does marketing overwhelm look like?
Marketing overwhelm happens when we find ourselves committing to more than we can actually feasibly do when it comes to marketing. Maybe we’ve planned a launch at a scale that we don’t have the resources for. Maybe we’ve decided that we’re going to be very active on MANY different social media platforms every day, but we don’t actually have the time available for that. Maybe we’ve committed to an email or content schedule that is simply unattainable.
Overall, it’s when we get to the point of feeling swamped with work, overloaded, defeated… even burned out. It feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day.
There are a lot of different possible symptoms of overwhelm that you might recognize.
You might find yourself procrastinating and looking for easy things to do instead of the things you feel like you “should” be doing.
Perhaps you’ll look for distractions like TV – something you can do to numb the stress.
You might experience trouble sleeping, a lack of energy, and issues with your mood.
The first instinct that many of us have when we start feeling this overwhelm is to simply push through it. To work longer hours, and to find ways to somewhat ignore reality and power on, despite the fact that we are unlikely to get through everything.But there is a much more productive way to approach overwhelm, and that is to face it head on.
I’m going to share my process for addressing overwhelm in hopes that it will be helpful to you, too. My process includes a brain dump, prioritization, and reflection.
Let’s talk about each of those steps.
A brain dump is the process of writing out everything on your mind. Don’t organize it, don’t filter it, don’t separate by category… just write down everything that’s contributing to that overwhelm. Maybe it’s appointments you need to schedule, and work deadlines, and a birthday party to plan for your kid, and a side hustle… Most likely when you start writing it all down, you’re going to find yourself writing all sorts of different things that you didn’t even realize you were carrying around.
I’d set yourself a timer for 20 minutes. This might sound like a long time to simply write down what’s on your mind, but the truth is, the longer you sit there and wait for things to come to you, more will come.
If you’re anything like me, you will be AMAZED at how long this list can be. This simple act of writing it all down… without even doing anything about anything on the list… this simple act can be so unbelievably therapeutic because it just removes some of the weight of the overwhelm.
When you know you have all of these tasks, items, stressors written down, you kind of remove the stress and pressure of having to keep them in your head all of the time.
But we don’t have to stop there. Once we have our list, we can go through it and try to lighten this load.
The first question I would ask myself is: What on this list simply doesn’t need to happen?? Are there things here that you can simply delete from the list and move on from?
For me this is when I’m wanting to go above and beyond on something in a way that really isn’t necessary.
The next question I would ask myself is: Is there anything on this list that I could delegate or get help from someone else on?
It might be a member of your team for work things, or it might be your partner or a family member for personal life things. But this is an important reminder that you don’t have to carry everything alone.
Then, I’d ask myself: What on this list can go on a “revisit this later” list?
Oftentimes, a lot of the things on your list will be longer term ideas that don’t necessarily need any action taken now… they’re just things we don’t want to forget. For this, I would recommend making a list of “revisit later” - and then actually put it on your calendar or your task management system with a date on it so you make sure to check-in with it and don’t let it just sit on a list you’ll never see again.
Now that I’ve answered these questions, I’d look at the remaining items on the list and rank them in order of when you’ll take care of them.
Now, I would prioritize first the tasks that are most related to your big goals. For example, if one of your goals is to get more wholesale accounts, and one of the items on your overwhelm list was to do wholesale outreach – then I’d definitely recommend that that particular task gets prioritized.
There’s a resource that can help you get your tasks prioritized, it’s called the Eisenhower Matrix. You can download a copy of the template at makinggoodpodcast.com/matrix.
The final step in this exercise once you’ve prioritized your tasks, is to actually put in your calendar when you’re going to tackle each of these items so you can be sure that they’ll get done.
I promise you, if you go through these steps, you will already feel a heck of a lot better.
If you’re one for journaling prompts or reflections questions, I have a couple of other questions you can ask yourself when it comes to processing your overwhelm.
The first is:
Where is perfectionism coming into play? Where could I reduce the scope of something?
If you have perfectionistic tendencies, you might relate to this. So often, we can find ourselves getting overwhelmed because we set ridiculously high expectations for ourselves, for no good reason.
Another question you can ask yourself is:
What boundaries or limitations could I put in place to prevent myself from experiencing this in the future?
Sometimes we’ve simply taken on more than we have time for. If that’s the case, perhaps it’s time to set some limits on how much work or other projects you’ll take on in the future. Maybe this is a number of clients, or doing fewer markets, or reducing your posting schedule on social media.
Finally, you can ask yourself my favorite question:
What can I learn from this?
There is always something to be learned. When you’re experiencing overwhelm, take the time to sit with it and ask yourself, what can I learn from this? What could I tweak or adjust in the future to make this less likely to happen.
So! Once you’ve done your brain dump and prioritized your tasks, you should wind up with a much smaller and more manageable task list to work through.My recommendation on this is to think hard about what kinds of conditions are most effective for you when it comes to productivity.Maybe you tend to get more things done when you’re at a coffee shop, or when you’re coworking with other people.Maybe you’re most efficient when you tell someone else your plan for the day so they can hold you accountable.
Or, maybe you’re like me, and you are most productive when you work in 25 minute increments. Extra credit for focus music like Focus@Will.
Whatever it is, it’s really worth taking your To Do list, and starting to work on it in circumstances and conditions you know are going to be conducive to helping you get things done.
The last thing I really want to talk about now is how to stop yourself from getting overwhelmed in the future.
Anyone who has experienced overwhelm probably likes the idea of NEVER FEELING THAT WAY AGAIN. Because being overwhelmed really sucks.So, what can we do now to prevent ourselves from reaching a point of overwhelm?
I definitely don’t have the magic solution on this, but I do have some ideas that I thought I’d share.
First, don’t push through when you start feeling some of the early symptoms of overwhelm. When you start feeling overloaded, swamped, like there’s never enough time… don’t ignore it! Start to think about lightening your load then, before it gets more intense and difficult to handle.
My second recommendation is to prioritize taking care of yourself. When we’re resting well, getting enough sleep, getting physical activity and otherwise taking good care of ourselves, it becomes a lot easier for us to tolerate stress. In fact many of these activities actually reduce stress levels.
Third, delegate where you can! Make it a practice to consistently ask yourself: what do I have on this list that someone else could do? How can I make that happen?
Finally, my favorite tip for preventing marketing overwhelm and possibly the most effective? Is to set a lower bar. Ask yourself how many hours you actually have available to spend on marketing, and make sure you’re not committing to more than that set amount of hours. If you're unsure, err on the side of committing to LESS.Also, when you’re creating content and pieces of marketing, be an imperfectionist! Recognize that doing something is progress – give yourself a lower bar than you might be inclined to when it comes to the level of polish you expect of yourself and your marketing.
SO! There you have it! My take on managing marketing overwhelm. If nothing else, what I hope you take away from this episode is a reminder that overwhelm doesn’t HAVE to be a fact of life if we pay a little bit more attention to our capacity and commitments.
One more thing before I wrap up: If you are very very familiar with this concept of marketing overwhelm and would like some support, I would love to have you join Making Good Happen.Making Good Happen is a membership program for small business owners who want to spend time doing THE RIGHT THINGS instead of spinning their wheels. There are over 60 members – they are seriously some of the coolest, most talented and kindest small business owners around, and you are so invited to join. There are coworking sessions, accountability, events, marketing training, an incredible community, and so much more. Get the details at makinggoodhappen.co.
Alright! That’s what I have for you today. You can find all the notes from this episode at makinggoodpodcast.com/117.
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