Is Your Marketing Haunted? 5 Scary Mistakes Hurting Your Business

Ever feel like your marketing is haunted by things you can’t quite name? In this Halloween-inspired episode, we’re calling out the five “monsters” that quietly creep into your strategy—like zombie tactics that waste time, ghosts of inconsistency, and funnel vampires that drain your energy. But instead of fear, we offer simple, practical shifts that bring your focus (and results) back to life.

You’ll hear how to audit what’s working, simplify your channels, and build trust before you try to sell. Whether you’re battling comparison, burnout, or just plain overwhelm, this conversation helps you spot the gaps and build a plan that feels human, doable, and effective. Want more support? Grab the free Marketing Strategy Playbook to map out your customer journey with intention.

Chapters

• 0:28 Why A Haunted House Tour
• 2:32 Room 1: The Zombie Marketing Strategy
• 5:20 Room 2: The Ghost of Consistency
• 10:23 Room 3: The Funnel Vampire
• 12:28 Room 4: The Web of Overwhelm
• 15:14 Room 5: The Comparison Witch
• 18:00 Recap

Transcript

Janice Hostager: 0:04

I'm Janice Hostager. After three decades in the marketing business and many years of being an entrepreneur, I've learned a thing or two about marketing. Join me as we talk about marketing, small business, and life in between. Welcome to My Weekly Marketing. Hey, and welcome back to another episode of My Weekly Marketing. I can remember when I think I was in junior high, middle school age, I think it was like 12, my best friend growing up, Marie and I, decided to create a haunted house for our friends. And it was a big deal to us. We decided to do it in my basement, and we had hung up sheets to divide up the rooms, which I'm sure my mom was not thrilled about, got the spooky music going, and we even cooked up things like spaghetti noodles to feel like worms, all those cheesy haunted house things. I know for sure that my parents were a little annoyed by this whole thing, but honestly, it was the best. I can't even tell you how many people showed up for it or if we even considered it a success or not, but I think just the whole process was really cool and I remember it to this day. So this week I was in a conversation with a client who decided to run a haunted house social media post. And like the haunted house we put together when I was 12, I got really excited about it. So, yes, I kind of stole the haunted house idea and decided to also do a social media post about it, but I realized that there was a lot more content that we could talk about than I could fit in a social post. So I've made this last-minute podcast episode about that. So call me crazy, but there's some good stuff in here that I think you want to hear. So today that we're going to take a little field trip to tour the haunted house of marketing. But don't worry, you don't need a flashlight or a costume, just a willingness to face a few marketing monsters that might be haunting your business. Because here's the truth: sometimes it's not your offer, your platform, or your effort that's holding you back. It's the invisible ghosts and goblins lurking inside your marketing strategy. So in today's Haunted House tour, we're going to meet five characters, five scary characters, and I'll show you how to defeat each one using a clear marketing strategy. Okay, here we go. Room number one, the zombie marketing strategy. So you push open the first creaky door, and there it is. See the zombie? It's dragging its feet, clutching an outdated marketing plan from 2019 and mumbling, "But this used to work!" The zombie strategy shows up when you keep repeating tactics that once worked but no longer do. Maybe it's that you're relying on word-of-mouth marketing instead of nurturing new leads. Or maybe you're still boosting random posts because that's what somebody told you to do years ago. Or maybe you're sending the same email sequence that hasn't been updated since, I don't know, five years ago. The problem isn't that these things never worked, it's that they've outlived their effectiveness because audiences have changed, algorithms have been updated, or maybe your audience has evolved as your business has grown. After all, your audience will grow with you. I had a client who built her business doing Facebook Lives back in 2018, and they worked beautifully back in 2018. But then her views started dropping, not all at once, but very slowly. And after a while, she started panicking. And then what she did, because it worked before, she doubled down. So she was instead of doing one post a week, she started doing two posts a week. So she was doing more of what didn't work. So what changed? First of all, her audience moved off Facebook and onto different platforms. So she needed to see where her audience was now. And also her email list was outdated. Many people on her list haven't been engaging. And that spells trouble for you because email service providers pay attention to that and it impacts deliverability. So we had her do a re-engagement campaign so she could purge up people that have been hanging on her list but never opening, clicking, or otherwise engaging, and certainly not buying. Once we pivoted to short-term reels for her on Instagram and done some YouTube shorts with her, and we optimized her email strategy, things started bouncing back. But it took some time and effort on her part, and things that she probably didn't realize were slipping away because had she known that earlier, she could have made the change earlier. And that's what happens with zombies, right? They look like they're alive, but they're really dead. So I want you to do a zombie check too. Make a list of everything you're doing for marketing. So content, emails, ads, anything. And then circle anything that you've been doing for more than a year without reviewing the data. Now, I always say I like to have my clients review data every month, but realistically, I know that often doesn't happen. And so at least once a year, take a look at that data. And you should be seeing upward trends. And if you're not, you need to ask yourself, is this still bringing in new leads, new engagement, and new sales? Because if not, you need to reevaluate that. You need to pause it, update it, or just bury it for good. Okay, so that was room number one. Our next room, let me just set the scene. The next room feels cold and abandoned. There are echoes of dusty blog drafts and abandoned campaigns and a podcast that was there and gone and then came back again. It's the ghost of inconsistency. This ghost loves to appear when life gets busy. You start strong, you're batching, you're planning, you're posting, and then a big client project comes in, and then poof, your updates vanish for weeks because you're so busy, right? But when you disappear, your audience loses trust. Consistency is what teaches people they can rely on you. And when you're inconsistent, that damage runs deeper than you think. It's not just about missing a week or two. Inconsistency chips away at trust, visibility, and momentum. Here's what really happens. When you go quiet, the algorithm assumes you've ghosted your audience and it punishes you for it. So when you finally post again, fewer people see it, and you're basically starting over from scratch every time instead of building the momentum that you've already worked so hard to earn. So when your next post finally appears, it feels random and engagement drops even lower. That tells the algorithm, oh, people aren't interested, which means your visibility sinks even more. And just like that, it becomes a social media death spiral. But please note, you can take a break now again. Just don't do it frequently and without warning. I'm not talking about taking a break from social media. I'm talking about really inconsistent posting. So posting several times one week or even for a few weeks and then just dropping off. So every time you do that, it tells the algorithm that you're not reliable. So you don't want to do that in social media, and you really don't want to do it with other things like your email marketing because people stop trusting you. So the second thing that this does is every time you disappear, your audience quietly fills that gap with somebody else who does show up. When you come back, it's like walking into a room where the conversation's already moved on and you have to reintroduce yourself and work twice as hard to grab that attention again. It's the same reason newsletters that go dark for months see huge drops in open rates when they come back. It's because the email platforms recognize that and they stop delivering emails for you. And also, it really sends the wrong signals to your customers. It consistently signals that you take your business and your audience seriously. If you're a hit or miss, your audience starts to wonder what else might be going on. It's not about perfection, it's about reliability. And then finally, marketing works like compound interest. Every post, email, and conversation builds on the last one. When you stop and start, you interrupt that growth curve. Instead of scaling up, you're consistently rebuilding from zero. So as much work as it is to be consistent, it's so much more work to play catch-up when you come and go. I had a coaching client who ghosted her list for two months. And it's not that she intended to do this because she really just got overwhelmed and she just had to let it slide. But when she finally sent out a new email, she got a lot of unsubscribes and a few who is this replies because people forgot they'd signed up, right? So email is a great example. You have to do it consistently. You don't need to do it daily, you need to be reliably consistent. I'd rather you post once a week, than five times one week, and then nothing for a month. Same with email. Although I always recommend emailing your list every week and sharing new content, it's better to commit to what you can do than to overcommit and underdeliver. So if you think this sounds like you, it's okay. We just need to start from scratch again. And I want you to create a bare minimum marketing plan and ask yourself, if I could only do one thing consistently, what would have the biggest impact? Maybe it's sending one email a week. Maybe it's one high quality Instagram reel. Maybe it's one podcast episode like this one. Commit to that for 30 days and build it up from there. Consistency keeps your audience moving through the Trail to the Sale. Ghost them, and they'll wander off the path. Okay, room number three. Here it is. A tall, charming figure wearing a black cape greets you at the door. My funnel can make you rich overnight, he says. But once you step inside, your time, your money, and your confidence start to drain away. Meet the funnel vampire. The funnel vampire promises you quick income, but without a strategy, funnels will bleed you dry. That's why I don't use a conventional marketing funnel and why I created the Trail to the Sale in the first place. So you can allow your audience to know, like, and trust you along the journey that they take. A funnel without nurturing your audience and nurturing that relationship is like inviting strangers to your haunted mansion for a party and not letting them get to know you or even where to get a snack or a drink. They're just gonna want to turn around and run away. I worked with a coach a while ago who had an awesome funnel set up. Ads, email, automation, evergreen webinar, but it wasn't converting. But why? It's because she skipped the relationship part. Her audience wasn't ready for the offer. It's like trying to propose on the first date, right? They weren't ready yet. They didn't know her and they didn't trust her. And I hate to say it, but she was focused on making the sale instead of serving her audience. Here's the truth. People might follow you for years before they buy, and often they will. That's why it's important to give them information they need and serve them in that way until they're ready for your offer. Focus on the serving. Build offers for them. To get past the funnel vampire, check to see how long you nurture your audience. Do you want them to buy right away? Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer and ask yourself, do I give them opportunities for them to get to know, like, and trust me before I ask for the sale? If the answer is no, add more value before your next offer, something that lets them sample what you're selling. Okay, here we are in room number four. As you turn the corner, you're suddenly tangled in a sticky web labeled logging, ads, SEO, YouTube, Reels, Pinterest, and the more you move, the more stuck you get. Have you guessed what this one is yet? Okay, I'm not sure about you, but I've definitely spent time in this room. It's the Web of Overwhelm. The Web of Overwhelm catches business owners who try to do everything at once. You've got 37 open tabs, five unfinished freebies, and a planner with full of ideas, but no clear pathway forward. You're mistaking activity for progress. You started your business wanting freedom, but now you have another job. Overwhelm doesn't just come from having too much to do, it comes from not knowing what to prioritize. We all have a lot to do. The trick is to put on blinders and focus on what moves the needle. Like I said, I've spent time in this room. It's really hard for those of us who have lots and lots of ideas to put on those blinders and focus on the one thing. So ask yourself, are the things on my to-do list today the things that actually bring in income or enable the process to bring in income? If not, delegate it, automate it, or eliminate it, at least for now. So I want you to choose one awareness channel. So the awareness channel is how people find you. That might be social media, speaking, PR, whatever has worked for you in the past or what seems to be working now. Then one consider channel, how you build trust with a free download and content. So one lead magnet, your freebie, and either a blog, YouTube, podcast, whatever your audience likes to hear. And then one conversion event. So that's how you make the sale. That could be a webinar, a seminar, a YouTube live event, a sales call, again, whatever works best for you. Everything else is optional. Stick with your core three for one quarter and then reassess. When you give your audience one clear route, they can actually follow it. And that's where the magic and sales start to happen. Okay, so as we go into this final room, a creepy witch looks up. As she stirs a bubbling cauldron, she has you looking at other creators and small business owners online, and she whispers, You're not doing enough. The witch of comparison feeds on insecurity, and I know her well. She thrives when you're online and when you're looking at other people who are crushing it, and you think, why am I even bothering? Or why can't I get that many sales? Or what am I doing wrong? Or why can't my website look like hers? Or you're scrolling on social media and you see other people who are putting tons of videos out when you can hardly complete one each week. The problem with the witch of comparison, you start chasing other people's strategies instead of refining your own. And those people are likely further down on their journey. It's hard though, isn't it? I still find that I'll do this. I'll compare my younger business with somebody who's been crushing it for years and think maybe I should abandon what I'm doing and instead do something like they're doing. I see this a lot when I take on new clients. They show me somebody else's website or social media page that they want to emulate. But the problem is that their story is never going to be your story. Their brand voice is never going to be your brand voice. Trying to duplicate that will lack authenticity, and your audience will pick up on that in a minute. And truthfully, that was probably me when I opened my first business a few years ago. No matter what your own story is, that is what people want and need to hear from you. You're not too old, too young, too thin, too heavy. You are you, and people relate to people. When we anchor my new client strategy around their voice, storytelling, and authenticity, then their best customers will start connecting with them and their business. And the same is true for you. People buy from connection, not perfection. You can't compare your beginning to somebody else's middle. Behind every polished post is a strategy, a process, and probably a well-paid video editor and a team of 10. So for one week, I want you to unfollow or mute any account that triggers self-doubt and replace them with three people who inspire you or teach you something useful that you can apply to your own business in an authentic way. Your mindset shapes your marketing, your business, and your success. So guard it fiercely. Okay, so there you have it. The five monsters haunting the haunted house of marketing. The zombie marketing strategy, the ghost of inconsistency, the funnel vampire, the web of overwhelm, and the witch of comparison. And the good news, you don't need holy water or a crucifix to defeat them. Just the plan. And guess what? I have that for you. If your marketing feels a little haunted right now, then go ahead and grab my free marketing strategy playbook. It walks you through the eight stages of the Trail to the Sale so you can stop wandering the haunted house and start moving forward with clarity. You can download it at janicehostager.com forward slash trail or click the link in the show notes in this episode. And you can find anything we talked about on this episode by going to myweeklymarketing.com forward slash 131. Thank you for joining me today and touring the haunted house of marketing. Remember, the scariest thing isn't marketing mistakes, it's staying stuck in them. You've got this, and I'll see you next week for another episode. Thanks so much for joining me. We'll see you next time.