Do you ever want to pull your hair out when you start thinking about marketing your business? If you're shaking your head, you're not alone. There are endless ways to market your business, which can be super frustrating. But as you may know, marketing is essential to business growth, so keep reading to get a step-by-step guide to streamlining your marketing so you can grow your business.

Related: Failed Startups Made These 7 Marketing Mistakes – Are You Making Them?

1. There is no strategy

Reason number one business owners frustrated with marketing is that they don't have a strategy in place. They're throwing things against a wall to see what works, but they're not getting any results.

Many business owners tend to do what they hear “works” right now (which can seriously change by the minute). But every business is different, so what Bob down the road is doing won't necessarily work for your business. Creating one strategy it doesn't need to take a lot of time, but it will help keep you focused and achieve your goals.

Another big no-no I see is business owners hiring someone's sister's 18-year-old niece to do their marketing since they “know how to do social media.” This is harmful for a number of reasons. First, being active on social media doesn't mean understanding social media strategy. Second, there is much more to marketing than social media; all your channels must work together to achieve results. Third, when these hires are made, they don't seem to last long and then business owners have to start the process all over again.

I totally understand that you probably didn't start your business to spend all of your time marketing, but once you put some time in to create a strategy, you can get back to doing what you love!

Action item

Block off an hour or two to think a marketing strategy that works for your business. Start with your goals – what are you trying to achieve? Next, consider your ideal CUSTOMER – what trouble keeps them up at night? From there, work on your messages. How can you connect with your ideal customer? This would be the words, phrases, images, type of content you create and where you link to them. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, be consistent and track your results so you can adjust along the way! If you need more help creating your strategy, head here.

2. There is no time

As business owners, we wear a million hats, but if you want to grow your business (or even stay in business), you'll need to make time for marketing.

Schedule some time in your calendar and commit to it. It might mean waking up 30 minutes early and brainstorming your coffee. Or it could be an hour on a Sunday night over a glass of wine to strategize your marketing for the week ahead. You don't have to have everything done and planned in that session, but getting ideas, events, topics, etc. out of your head and onto paper (or digital paper) makes a big difference.

Create a calendar and put all your ideas (finished and unfinished) on it so you know what's coming and are prepared for it. This exercise, done over and over again, relieves so much stress and makes your marketing more effective. It can be as easy as a handwritten planner, an online tool like Asana, Trello, or even a Google spreadsheet. Don't make it too complicated; you just start. You can adjust along the way.

Action item

Look at your calendar and block off some time (preferably the same day and time each week) to focus on executing your marketing. Decide what tool (if any) you will use to create your calendar based on the strategy you created in step one. Commit to doing so; it will get faster and easier the more you do it. You'll start seeing results sooner than you think.

3. No results

A key thing to remember is that once you've created your marketing strategy and started executing on it, you need to look analytics to see what works and what doesn't. Numbers tell a story, and you'll be able to see red flags, trends, and more when you start looking at your analytics regularly. They'll tell you what people like, what they don't like, what they're up to, etc.

A good place to start is to look at your website analytics, social media analytics, and email marketing analytics. If you're spending money on advertising, make sure you track it.

Related: 11 Effective Marketing Strategies to Help Improve Your Startup

Action item

Start reviewing your analytics once a month (I like to review mine and clients at the beginning of each month for the past month). Create a spreadsheet and track the numbers. As I mentioned, you'll start to notice things you might not have before, which will help guide your marketing strategy and get results.

Bonus tip

“Consistency is key. One of the biggest issues I see in marketing is inconsistency. Business owners often start and stop their marketing efforts, or start seeing results and then ease off, only to run into the same problem again and again. later and have to start again”.

Set the alarm, stick a post-it on the mirror and get one accountability partner or all of the above. Just commit to putting some energy and time into your marketing. You will see results.