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Avoid The Marketing Doom Loop

Are you getting your practice known in a manner that builds credibility and brings buyers to you? You have the ability to move from anonymous to credible to a sought after consulting practice. If you’re not sharing your insights with buyers of your services, you’re in The Marketing Doom Loop.

The Marketing Doom Loop uses an exercise adapted from Dory Hollander’s book The Doom Loop. Dory’s a career consultant who tells the story of how The Doom Loop got its name. She uses a four-box method to help clients get in touch with preferences and what excites them. This exercise uses four quadrants: Good at, Like; Need to Improve, Like; Good at, Don’t Like; Not Good At, Don’t Like (illustrated below).

One client, a young man, was in a very unsatisfying job. After performing the exercise, Dory and her client were talking it through. Unfortunately, much of her client’s job fell into not good at, don’t like. He looked at Dory in amazement and said, “If I stay in this job, I’ll be doomed.”

How The Doom Loop works.  Start through the boxes in the illustration above. Your comfort zone is your area of competence. However, stay comfortable too long and your comfort zone becomes your bored zone. Stay bored too long without renewing and learning some new skills and your heading for DOOM.  

Renewal and learning leads to excitement and interest. Clients are attracted to energy and passion. The excitement zone encompasses new learning.

Without excitement and interest, a consultant is not different. 

Without competence and self-confidence, a consultant won't add value.

Are you maintaining a balance between comfort and excitement?

To assess your marketing efforts, use a list of marketing visibility activities. Place each activity  in the appropriate box. Now check the activities you are currently performing on a regular basis.

From my experience, most individuals enjoy what they’re good at doing, but may have to go through some pain and anxious moments learning a new skill. If you don’t think you like something or you’re not good at it, you may have a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

Is it time to evaluate your attitude toward these activities "you don't like?" If the activities have great impact potential to your business, you may want to shift your thinking toward them.

If you have a balance of marketing visibility activity check marks in your comfort and your excitement zones, you’re doing the right things.

What is not checked in your comfort and excitement zones? Could you adapt an activity you’re currently doing into THOSE ACTIVITIES? Those are high priority activities to think about and place in NEXT YEARS PLAN. As excitement zone items you are currently doing move into your comfort zone, you have new areas for growth and excitement already defined.

If you have too many activities in the bottom boxes, evaluate the importance to your practice.

Could you learn to like them with some success?  

If not, you may be limiting your practice’s potential.

The Marketing Doom Loop exists when an individual says, 

“I can’t; I’m not a good writer; speaking is not my thing.” 

If you are more comfortable speaking, develop a speech you can turn into an article. If you are more comfortable writing, start there. 

Here are four ways to Avoid the Marketing Doom Loop:

1.       Believe in YOURSELF. Just by being alive, we run into countless people and situations that consulting insight can make interesting. If you’re not using that information to help your buyers improve their situations, you’re missing fantastic opportunities. Interest and enthusiasm breed creativity. Merely by developing a workshop, three new articles resulted in less than two weeks time!  

2.  Build on what YOU know. In our work we run across fantastic stories. In working with a client regarding passing culture to branch offices, one of his objectives is for everyone to love the company as much as he does. When a peer in the meeting asked why he answered, “Our Chairman believed in me and stood behind me to one of his friends; the company stood behind me when my daughter was sick.” He proved an important point.  Individuals respond positively when treated with caring and as individuals.  An article such as “How to ensure employees love working for you so YOUR boss loves you!” is the start of a piece for supervisors and middle managers. To executive management it might be, “Do shareholders love to invest in your company?” You have similar wonderful stories to use. Notice, write and share them.

3.  Don’t expect everyone to approve.  Everyone is not your buyer. Some individuals will not like or agree with what you say. The ones who do agree are your buyers.

4.   Shake someone up. Provocative can mean anything from make angry to stir to action. My buyers are improvement minded: they like to shake things up to get something done and are constantly improving themselves! What do your buyers want? Somebody Moved My Cheese was written for security minded buyers who like touchy/feely. My article Nobody Moved Your Cheese will not reach the same buyer. My buyers like it. They’re proactive and almost get apoplexy from those stupid mice that sit in a warehouse for days and whine, “Who moved my cheese?”

Whether you wish to ’just’ build your practice or to become famous, everyday you wait you’re missing countless opportunities. Make buyers aware of your work and its benefit to them. The best way to leverage your work is keep it simple, plan it, execute methodically, and leverage it to multiple usages.

Bring buyers to you and enjoy the reputation and fame your hard work deserves. You have to execute to avoid The Marketing Doom Loop.

Janice Scanlan helps organizations and individuals build relationships that accelerate success. If you would like to receive a complimentary Marketing Doom Loop exercise, email Janice at janicescanlan@earthlink.net and request a Marketing Doom Loop exercise.