How to overcome the fear of self promotion? In online marketing, one of the biggest causes for the loss of revenue & sales is the fear of self-promotion. People are simply not launching their products because they are afraid of what will happen after they hit the “publish” button.

Did you know that one of the most common fears of human being is public speaking? And what more could you ask to have the feeling of public speaking in front of millions of strangers online. That is what it means to be marketing online.

We believe overcoming the fear of self-promotion is an integral part that every business owner has to overcome. You may be someone that fears the feedback, the criticism someone makes when they realize that your product is bad.

You may fear that you are not being clear enough with your audience. Fearing of ineffectively communicating the message.

Suppose you are doing a video, is the quality of the video good enough? What will people think of me?

Or if you are conducting a seminar, are the slides good enough, is my dress pretty enough?

The truth of the matter is, when you not showcasing your work to the world, you are not doing a service yourself nor are you being a benefit to other people. Self-promotion is a fact of life. But first, let’s go onto the reasons why people are scared of self promotion..

Why Are People Scared Of Self Promotion?

From compiling a list of over 100 articles published online on the topic of self-promotion, what I found were two commonalities that held people back from self-promoting.

(1) Fear of Failure

The first reason is the fear of failure, but more specifically it’s the fear of failure in front of people you know.

If you are simply just failing but you are failing when no one is looking – then it that really failure? That is because there is no emotional consequence failing when no one is looking.

But if you are failing in front of your friends, families, and work colleagues then it’s something that will sting because you are losing a part of your reputation.

Know that the fear of failure is something you must overcome in order to put out good content. You are going to fail, it’s a fact of life. But what’s most important is not the failure per say, but the feedback you receive from it that allows you to create excellent pieces of content.

(2) Fear of Imperfection

The second reason is the exact same reason why people procrastinate. It’s the perfectionist within themselves trying to get everything right.

You know, adding a punctuation mark here and there, making the sentence look slightly prettier, etc.

Now I’m not saying that attention to detail is not important, because it aboslutely is. What I’m saying is overpreparation and over-analyzing things that will not add to anything to your business bottom line.

That’s a waste of valuable time and money.

You are afraid to launch because you want everything to be “perfect” first. Well guess what ladies and gentlemen, there will never be a time that is perfect to launch so you might as well throw yourself in the deep end and figure things out as you go along.

Your products will always have a defect in it, something that needs to be changed, something that can be improved.. what we can do really is to reduce the amount of errors but even that has its limitations.

To overcome the fear of imperfection is to know that nothing is perfect in this world. The biggest companies (billion dollar companies) such as Google, Amazon, Alibaba embrace failure as part of the learning process.

The book: “How Google Works” which talks about the culture in the company highlights about on their policy of moving fast to the point where you are failing on purpose. That way you are able to ship the products fast, but it’s not only about being fast but creating quality products.

How exactly does failure create quality products you may ask?

Failure in the process allows you to refine the products to a point where flaws are no longer present because you are able to see objectively based on raw data what is working and what isn’t.

Without any sort of failure, you will not be able to create quality products based on planning and research alone because you simply do not have any raw experience to create them. Embrace failure as part of the process so you can overcome the fear of self promotion.

Imposter Syndrome

Another reason why people have a fear of self-promotion is due to the imposter syndrome.

According to Hbr, imposter syndrome is simply definable as doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud. It’s the mindset or belief that the work you are putting out is not good, or not of quality.

“People are going to say it’s bad so why bother..” is a common thought that someone with imposter syndrome has.

Imposter syndrome in my opinion is an extremely destructive belief and it stems from comparing yourself to other people. Who are you comparing yourself to, because the work you put out there is subjective – some people like it, some people don’t.

The real judge of any digital marketing campaign has to be the marketplace and not the creator.

That’s why you must realize that our work has value because of the time, effort and care you put in, be proud that you are putting out good work.

Overcome imposter syndrome by realizing the value you provide to your market and workplace.

No one knows what they are doing

Take away SOPs (standard operating procedures), fleshed-out marketing processes, and what you will realize is that at no one really knows what they are doing. People had to innovate through trial and error to come out with the current processes you see in marketing. But these are still subjective, as there is still no “best way” to do things.

The marketplace is in a constant state of flux, what’s working one day may not work tomorrow. We want to remain flexible and adaptable in our approach.

Any process or procedures was generated because of prior trial and error and experimentation. Especially in a field such as copywriting and digital marketing, things are so new that no one really has an answer to what is the best way to market things.

Realize that no one really knows what they are doing (even if they tell you they know). To overcome the fear of self-promotion in that sense is to realize that everyone else is having the same fear as you of looking stupid, and being wrong. But the truth is, no one knows what they are doing, and it’s a battlefield and a race to find out to find out what are the best ways and strategies to market your products.

Key Takeaways

Overcoming the fear of self-promotion is the first step for any business owner to scale their company. You have to really overcome your fear of failure and the fear of imperfection to be able to get what you want.

Remember, in business, the time to market is crucial. If your time to market is slow then you are going to lose out towards your competitors that are aggressive and hungrier than you for results.

Train yourself to overcome the fear of self-promotion, launch as fast as possible. There will always be resistance onto putting that work that is subpar but trust the process that eventually over a period of time, your work will become better just by the fact that you are getting valuable marketplace feedback and putting yourself out there.

Sources: All images are taken from pexels.com with credits to their respective owners.