The message of a burnout marketer!

Lately, I have resumed my coaching sessions, after a break of almost a year. I longed to feel the man in front of me, to connect to his energy, to his dreams, to the desire to gain clarity in actions.

It was incredible, I just forgot how it is. To play with the moments of silence at the table, to let my body report intuitively, to shudder when he tells me what he wants.

One more surprising thing. Once I said yes, again, in the first phase of some older clients, with whom I knew each other, more and more requests started to appear, without doing anything. As if the message had been transmitted through an invisible channel to all who needed guidance.

One Friday, after an intense coaching session, when I was on my way to Toma's to pick him up from school, I received a message.

"I need a Zarnescu, although the chances are slim, I want to see you for coffee. Tell me YES!"

That Zarnescu, that's all I could think of when I read his lines (at a traffic light, I admit!). I called him.

"What's burning?"

And his voice shocked me, making him tremble as if he were at the end of his emotional endurance.

"Man, I didn't expect you to call me. It's going to sound stupid, but I'm trying to make a two-day video for Facebook for a release. it works. "

Then came a long silence in the car (when I'm in coaching mode, I don't rush to fill in the blanks). After good seconds, he told me, his voice trembling, but very faint, barely heard among the sounds of a rescue that was making its way through traffic.

The rules of the game have changed. A lot.

Being somehow on the periphery of the action (protected by a project that I believe in a lot and that gives me incredible satisfaction), I was not so affected. But I have witnessed the struggles of all things digital marketing.

I had my first blog in 2004 (in Joomla), and in the first campaigns, 98-99% of customers did not pay by card, because they did not trust "online". Even now, 18 years later, I remember the shocked remarks of those who heard what they were doing. They looked left and right, impatient, before leaning over to speak to me in a whisper:

"What do you mean by selling online? Are you a hacker?"

Going back, however, things are very different today.

There is almost no "offline" marketing. You can have a business built of bricks and mortar, and you still have a presence in the ocean represented by online: site, content on the site (maybe), subscription system, Facebook page, and content in MS (on several platforms).

And if you only have that, you are seen as an outcast, an old man, a businessman who does not adapt to the times.

Things have gotten worse, especially in the last two years, starting in 2020 - when many businesses have closed and those that remain have migrated a lot to the virtual space, with the related actions of a dying animal, sprouted from all parts of a ruthless pack of hungry wolves.

On this occasion, everyone started posting offers on Facebook and other Social Media channels. On the system, "I'm screaming that I have something at a discount, maybe someone can hear me."

Then began the diversification of messages and the creation of more complicated strategies:

• the competition has grown massively and, with the competition, the noise has increased (if one no longer hears man with man);
• this has led to a congestion of marketing messages in a very short period.

Nobody heard anything but offers, discounts, and content of all kinds, but it came from despair, not from the desire to connect authentically with a target audience.

Then came the great resignation. And things got even more complicated.

Great resignation

It came as a rumor, at first, from a friend who had gone into technical unemployment. "I'm getting my feet wet," he told me. And he started blogging in the middle of the pandemic. Cooking, eating, losing weight. That's why. :)

Behind his friend came a tsunami of resigning employees. People who have found in the pandemic an excuse to do something on their own FINALLY. Blogs have appeared over blogs, landing pages paid ads, funnels built, and products launched. In 2-3 months you couldn't breathe, because everyone was doing the same thing.

"Are you dirty?" That was the reaction I had when I heard another resignation.

"Yes, I'm consulting now…"

"In the?"

"I still don't know… but I get the hang of it after doing a little awareness."

Facebook groups appeared, dedicated to marketers, and the first sign that things were getting complicated for me was when I started to no longer understand the questions of those who had just left. But not because they did not express themselves well, but because the level of complexity had increased greatly.

From time to time another one appeared, shouting:

"WEBINAAARIII!"

And bam, where no one else was doing, now everyone was holding a free webinar.

MICRO WORKSHOPS.

REEELS.

TIK TOK, it's crazy there! Do you know how cheap advertising is?

THE FUTURE IS IN PODCASTS!

Breaking news! We give accredited diplomas, now online!

Everyone was selling something or teaching someone something. How to tie a collar to the neck of a rabid dog. 3 rules of eternal happiness when you are divorced. When do your goods become common goods in a marriage? How do you recover debts from an insolvent company? How to have a pandemic wedding, ONLINE?

And then, in this sea of ​​posts, the quality standard suddenly increased.

High Quality, a new challenge!

I remember the first video I made in a course launch, about 12-14 years ago. I bought a camera on Amazon for $ 200. I had no lights, except for the light bulb on the ceiling, which was knocked to one side.

Half the girl was in the shadows. The sound was from the room, I didn't have a lavalier. To listen to me, you had to bring your ear closer to the computer. If you were loud, there was a hiss and you couldn't focus on what I was saying. It went like that because at that time people didn't make videos. What was worse: if you put on your headphones, you could only hear one.

This stage is somehow normal as well. When you have the quantity, a lot of pressure is created in the market. With many niche courses appearing and the world being greedy for them, being in lockdown, high-quality content began to appear:

• through structures, very good sales pages appeared;
• through design workshops and various working models that offer shortcuts, the level of quality in graphics is simply incredible, already;
• the photos now all seem to have been taken by professional photographers (and technology has grown a lot here as well);
• many have invested in "pay-per-view" studios - and homemade videos are at an exceptional overall quality level, both in terms of image and sound and in terms of script and performance.

The standard has risen to such an extent that a friend once said to me, shrugging very suggestively: "Today, if you don't do quality, you make yourself laugh even more; with people putting thousands or tens of thousands of euros into training and equipment. "

We have quantity and quality. What's next? Ah, yes. Much weaker sales results.

Online Fatigue Syndrome

If you do a google search, you will see that there is a term, which comes bundled with very detailed articles on how it is born, but also how to fight it.

Online fatigue first appeared under the name "Zoom fatigue", following the decision of the companies to move the remote activity, due to the pandemic.

The coordination of the activity was done through online meetings with the help of Zoom applications. If at first burnout was an exotic thing, which you understood more rationally, after the lockdown more and more people began to feel symptoms of chronic fatigue.

It seems that if you keep your eyes on the screen for so long, you will "fry" sooner or later.

Online fatigue is a little different, but it is based on the same cause: it is described as an acute feeling of exhaustion, anxiety, stress & burnout, which comes from excessive consumption of online content.

• people have less and less able to concentrate (attention span), because there is too much content, too much quality, on all sides;
• in the context in which new and new "players" appear (not consumers, but content creators)

In other words, "something is rotten in Denmark":

• Advertising costs on Facebook (but also in general) have simply exploded, with most users being extremely dissatisfied with the results. (because "a lot of people use it" + an algorithm that keeps changing the rules of the game, in real-time + a global tendency to give up 3rd party cookies, which makes targeting less accurate);
• Organic search has dropped for obvious reasons: too much content, low attention span, no one cares what you created anymore because there is a lot of "offer";
• Open rates for emails have also decreased due to quantity, the inboxes being flooded with newsletters that users can no longer open;
• Every consumer is a content creator and marketer today (everyone wants to influence someone through content).

Marketers are today, octopuses that deal with extremely complex processes, in a very competitive environment. The market is constantly changing, which worked 3-4 months ago, today it is already outdated.

"Okay, I get it! And what's the solution?"

Well, when you have poorer results, even if you work harder - that's because, somewhere along the way, you've gotten too complicated.

Or, in other words, you no longer have clarity.

So, the first step is to take a step back and redraw what you do (or want to do), on the principle of 80-20, which you probably know too well.

LESS IS MORE.

I see more and more people giving up on being crazy. Decided to focus only on 1-to 2 basic strategies - and not fight on all fronts at the same time.

Ironically, though, it's pretty hard to get clear when you've been in survival mode for two years, doing everything in your power to stay relevant in the marketplace.

I want to tell you about this in the following newsletter:

• what you should avoid AT ANY PRICE from now on, so as not to complicate your marketing activity even more!
• about the two philosophies you can go to, in marketing, (only one of them bringing results, constantly);
• plus what a KMM (Key Marketing Map) should contain - so you can focus only on the actions that bring you results and fulfill you; there are five business coaching questions with which you put aside the ballast and keep the essence in your business;
• KMM applies to specialists in marketing, copywriting, and influencers, but also business owners who have an acute need for clarity;
• moreover, I will tell you about the copywriting course that I will give PHYSICALLY in July, this year!

I'm back!

P.S. If you like to read while drinking coffee, you can offer me a coffee too.

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