Maybe this sounds familiar: you’re staring at your marketing to-do list, fully aware of how important it is to get things planned and executed, and yet getting started feels hard.
How much do you schedule your business activities, especially marketing? Working with clients over the years, I’ve seen the impact a schedule — or lack thereof — can have. The good news is that when you find a schedule that works for you, it can make a big difference in being productive, getting your marketing done regularly, and feeling on top of things.
Does it seem like there are always too many things to do to market your business? It’s easy to get overwhelmed by marketing ideas, plans, and tasks, especially when many of them involve learning new skills. And then people are always telling you about something else to do. But you’re only one person.
Have you ever found yourself knowing exactly what you need to do about marketing your business… and then not doing it? You are not alone. Many self-employed professionals and creatives find that the hardest part of marketing isn’t figuring out what to do. What’s hard is actually doing it.
When you look at your marketing to-do list, do many of the items on it look all too familiar? Have entries like “call Dolores Sanchez” and “follow up with Wallingford Corp.” been copied from a previous week? Putting off unappealing tasks may be human nature, but for a self-employed professional, procrastination can be deadly.
Delays in contacting a prospect can lose the business to the competition. Failing to get the word out about an upcoming event may forfeit dozens of opportunities. When prospects don’t hear from you for a while, they forget you exist. Wasted marketing time can never be recovered. By the time you realize you might not make your sales goals for the month, quarter, or year, it may already be too late.
What’s your way to get things done? Do you feel you’re an achiever who enjoys checking off boxes? Or do you see yourself as more laid back, getting to things whenever you can? Whatever your style, the truth is, if you’re in business for yourself, you need to get things done, and chances are, no one else will jump in to save the day. Which begs the question: how do you do things most easily and in a way best suited to you?
What’s your style?
In working with clients, I see two typical categories of doers: 1) those who love making a list and working through it, some going so far as to draw their own little check boxes next to each to-do item in a notebook, or 2) those who take a looser approach, writing items on the backs of envelopes, on their hand, or random sticky notes. Both approaches have their merits.
Taking good care of your clients means taking care of your business, and one of the simplest paths to taking care of both your clients *and* your business is by tracking the numbers.
“Will this marketing approach be worth my while?” It’s a question self-employed professionals often ask. But there’s a related question that, unfortunately, they ask much less often: “How much will it cost compared to what it brings in?” Surprisingly few professionals know the answer to this crucial question, and many admit it had simply never occurred to them.
Every marketing approach has a set of costs attached. Social media ads, pay-per-click campaigns, and trade show exhibits come with a price tag in dollars. Networking mixers, business lunches, and posting/interacting on social media take up your time, and may also incur expenses.
It happens to the best of us. We have brilliant plans for marketing our business, but the rest of life keeps getting in the way. We know we won’t succeed if we don’t spend time on marketing, but somehow days and weeks slip by, and our marketing to-do list gets longer instead of shorter.
All the experts say that as a self-employed professional, you need a marketing plan, so you’ve designed one. Good for you! The very fact that you’ve taken the time to think about how you want to market your business and written it down will increase your odds of success at getting clients.
