How Valuable Is Your Time?

Benjamin Franklin "Remember that time is money"

Money spent on your small business marketing activities is easy to see, just check your bank balance. It is also relatively easy to judge whether you have got a return on the amount of money you have spent.

What can be forgotten is to look at the cost of your valuable time versus the results gained. These could be called the hidden costs, because they are not so apparent unless you are aware and actively measure.

As you take advantage of free or low cost tools and technology to action your own marketing activities the cost of your time and the results achieved will become more important.

Two recent articles, one by Chris Brogan “How Much Time Should I Spend on Social Media” and Ruth M Shipley in Social Media Examiner “Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day” (a book by Dale Evans) give good tips to help you in this area.

No doubt there will be articles written on other marketing activities in time.

You might say it is difficult to judge actual results and this may be the case in some areas as the results are not always instantaneous, but build up over time. However this can also be the case when you spend money.

As you would set aside a budget to spend in your marketing plan, it is a good idea to do the same for your time.

Here are some tips to help you:

• Estimate the cost of your time.
• If you can work out what key marketing activities you spent time on this year and the results achieved that can be a good base to start.
• Work out what key marketing activities you are going to action next year
• Estimate the hours and break it down by project. E.g. email newsletter 2 hours per week or 8 hours for the month.
• Estimate the results you want to achieve.
• Track your results throughout the year and make adjustments as you need to.
• Make as much use of technology that increases your productivity as you can.

Whilst this may seem to be a bit of a pain you want to be sure you are getting a return for your valuable time as you would want a return on any money spent.

You may also find that some of your activities are producing a better result so that you can focus on these and drop other activities.

These are my thoughts and I am interested to know how you feel about this approach.