Many people considering self employment who hold traditional beliefs about marketing will focus all their attention on external stimuli or factors.

They focus they’re attention on various things like:-

• Their website
• Their marketing collateral
• Their sales presentation
• Who their prospective clients are
• How they will reach those clients
• What additional resources they need to manifest the results they crave.

Many become obsessed about the results they want.

However, the mere act of wanting something confirms to their subconscious that they don’t have it already. All their worries, concerns and trepidations about external matters are in fact the outer manifestation of their inner conflict, doubt and guilt in not aligning their thoughts, feelings and actions to create a congruent plan of action.

How often have you:

• heard someone say one thing, but do another.
• done one thing, but thinking it wouldn’t work.
• Felt one thing, and thought something differently.

The same is all true when it comes to your marketing.

Many people end up dealing with the symptoms of poor, bad or selfish marketing instead of looking inwardly for the root cause of their poor progress or poor results to date.

Many blame external factors -

• It’s the recession
• It’s the banks fault
• It’s them, they don’t “get it”
• It’s the government’s fault
• It’s the volatility of the market
• No-one has any money
• No-one is buying this close to christmas

If you are experiencing a lack of progress, or a lack of results in your external world with regards to your marketing, then it is highly likely that the environment you find yourself in is entirely of your own making. How often do you look inside yourself for the answers to your marketing problems? How often do you question whether your values, your actions, and your “offer” are all aligned and match your beliefs and expectations whilst realising and confirming the perceptions of others.

Afterall, do we not create the reality we experience – and that includes poor results from our marketing?

External solutions may help you greatly in your quest to succeed at marketing, but they are not the total solution. If your mind and heart are not in it, then regardless of how hard you kid yourself, a website, CRM system and keen pricing will not only go so far in helping you to create the results you want.

Your beliefs are what shape you, and that which you believe to be true will guide your actions. Worse still, many of our existing beliefs are limiting beliefs that keep us in fear and prevent us from experiencing the results we want.

• Advertising doesn’t work
• Breakfast meetings are a waste of time
• Direct mail is too expensive
• I cant justify the investment in a stand at a tradeshow
• Twitter serves no commercial purpose whatsoever
• People don’t use Skype, they pick up a phone to speak to someone
• Social bookmarking – huh no-one visits these sites anyway

Any of these sound familiar? Have any of these limiting beliefs prevented you from trying, testing or experiencing a different approach to generate the results you want?

When it comes to marketing, and visiting your internal processes, remember that you are a “creator”, you create the reality you want. You create the reality you think and act upon. You create your own “marketing” experiences with your thoughts and feelings towards marketing.

Ironically, many people start off as “creators” then they see something their competitors are doing, or something else that a partner or peer might be doing. They then want to imitate or copy them thinking they are enhancing their own proposition. But guess what, they then experience even poorer results having expended all that extra energy and effort just to be less unique than they were before, thus weakening their own USP and advantage.

By imitating others, they lose their sense of identity, and confidence in themselves, they appear to be like their competitors, too samey, and become “just another one of those…”

It’s happening all over the internet as many social networking sites start copying others and implementing features other sites have, thus weakening their own original proposition.

I’d go as far as saying that when it comes to the internal processes and factors of your marketing, you are the policy maker.

You are the “meaning maker”.

However as you go about your marketing – online or offline, and the results you create in the future, you always get to create the meaning for yourself.

Once you become aware of how you manage your internal marketing processes, you will have the power of becoming a conscious marketing creator. Your deliberate (positive) thoughts and actions will enable you to decide how you want to experience your marketing efforts.

The problem is, most people don’t investigate their internal marketing processes, and only rely on their outer or external tools and resources.

Stop using google to search for the latest web marketing tools, and start using your heart to find the best marketing tools you need, and already have. More to the point, are your values, promises and beliefs aligned with your thoughts, feelings and actions?

In the history of the universe, you are unique – be true to yourself, and start creating the future you want from your marketing.

So, what’s the next marketing objective you want to achieve?

Fraser J. Hay