Developing the Right Habits For Success in Marketing | Snappy Book Reviews

“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. 

They don’t seem like much on any given day, but over the months and years their effects can accumulate to an incredible degree.” – James Clear.

Ongoing success in life– and marketing– is ruled by habits. 

“Atomic Habits“, by author James Clear, seeks to explain the concrete steps that any person can take to begin to see real results from their efforts. 

Check out the video review, or keep reading for extra insight.

These steps will help you become more efficient in achieving new habits, in life and more specifically, in your marketing. 

Getting results from marketing requires consistency. Creating valuable content, engaging your prospects and clients via emails, running ads to drive traffic to your landing pages, etc. – all require consistency.

And consistency is a habit. In this blog post, we reviewed the book – Atomic Habits – and share how you can apply it to your marketing.

The Mindset

Goals are exciting to talk about!

“I want to lose 50 pounds!” or “I want to double my business.” are easy to say. 

Getting those goals DONE? Now, that’s a different story.

Clear says goal-setting is great, but it comes with a caveat:

Just imagining our idealized self is rewarding to our brains. It’s so rewarding, that it makes it hard for the brain to start to create the motivation to follow through with the difficult work it takes to reach that goal. 

Therefore, we must reorient our mindset to focus a lot more on the “how”, instead of becoming enamored only with the final result.

For instance, your goal for the year could be to 3x the number of your clients.

Instead of focusing on that goal, you should instead focus on the activities you can do every day, week, and month that will impact your goal.

Activities like scheduling 5 calls every day, hosting a zoom chat once every month, sending out bi-weekly emails, etc.

The Framework

Clear says “the purpose of setting goals is to win the game. 

The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. 

True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. 

Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.”

Therefore, fall in love with systems. 

Systems help you remain consistent and even identify the things in your life and business that can be automated.

The following four-point framework will help you build a system for achieving your goals.

Make It Obvious 

Your new habit needs to be very specific and obvious. 

Think about your clients. You know it’s not  enough to say “I want to be financially secure.” 

“Financially secure” has to be defined. And that definition can vary from person to person.

So, it’s critical that the goalposts be set early on, to make the accomplishment that much more obvious as it comes along. 

This makes the accomplishment easier to measure too. It also makes it more rewarding to achieve and celebrate the small wins along the way.

How can you make your marketing goals obvious?

By noting the exact change you want to see and by when.

For instance, “by the end of the year, I want to 3x the number of my clients.”

With this, you can tell in 2, 3, or 4 months, if you are getting closer to achieving your goal and when you get your goal, of course, it will be obvious.

Make It Attractive

We don’t chase goals that don’t have rewards. 

There are circumstances when one might have to couple a reward with the habit we are trying to create. 

There is a great example from the book in which a friend of the author wanted to work out more but also wanted to get in his Netflix time. 

The solution?

 He rigged up his exercise bike to power his Netflix account, so he could only watch while he was working out. This helped him knock out two birds with one stone. 

In your marketing, you just don’t want to set any random goal. You want to set goals that matter to you, that you find rewarding and that will impact your bottom line. 

For instance, why do you want to double the amount of traffic to your website? 

To generate more leads? More revenue? Write it down.

Make It Easy

Easy sounds like the opposite of what most people would want out of their new habit, but this is perhaps the most important foundation of all. 

You have to be able to attain the goal that you have set for yourself, or you are never going to take the time to try to get it done. 

No, it is not easy to quit smoking, but it might prove easy to reduce your cigarette intake by one per day in the beginning. 

After you have mastered that, then you reduce it by two per day and so on.  By doing this, you will find yourself in a place where you can start to accomplish big things.

You are not just going to wake up in Dec 2021 and have tripled your client base, you have to work for it right? 

So what easy activities can you do consistently to achieve this? 

Create monthly freemium offers, scheduling 5 calls every day, hosting a zoom chat once every month, sending out bi-weekly emails, etc. 

Define the activity that will be easy for you to implement and that when compounded, will help you achieve your goal.

Make It Satisfying

Everyone loves the praise and acclaim that comes from achieving big things.

The goals you set for yourself should also be worthy of external praise. 

Won’t it be great to be able to celebrate your wins with friends and family? 

It will also serve as motivation on your lowest days.

By the end of the year, you want to be able to look at your client base and love the growth that you see. 

You want to feel proud!

Satisfaction is how you know you set the right goal at the beginning. 

So, think, are your marketing goals obvious? Are they attractive? Can you break it down into activities that are easy to execute daily? Will you be proud?

If yes, then well done! 

You are on your way to setting a habit that can potentially change your business and life.

Did you like this book review? Check out our first review here, or swing by the YouTube playlist to see if any new reviews have been dropped in there.