The number of marketing tactics you can action today that take up your time versus money continues to grow.
Are you getting the return on your marketing tactics that you want or are you just eating up that precious thing called time?
When you have many client projects to complete the hours spent on marketing your brand often goes onto the backburner.
When things settle down you turn your attention back to your marketing tactics.
Bad move.
This is not a very productive way of doing it and makes your marketing efforts more difficult and complex than they should be. The reason is that if you leave it too long you can lose the awareness and presence amongst your current and potential customers.
As I have written before I believe time should be included in your marketing budget. After all if you spend money you want to see a return.
If you think of your time as a budget and you allocate it according to your priorities you could be surprised by the results.
It is following the same line as if you had a dollar budget to allocate and it does depend on a number of factors just as it does if you were spending money.
There are a number of things to consider here are three:
Maximum allocation
It is up to you and if you decide that you can only allocate 2 hours when you are loaded up with projects or other business activities, then that is what you have to work with.
One way to do this is to think of how much time you could spend when you have a lot of projects to complete and want a life as well.
Marketing tactic choice
This is where you need to decide what you are going to spend time on that will get results and continue to build your customer relationships. It could be blog posts, email newsletters, social media, networking etc.
Tracking your success
Unless you do this it is a waste of your time. Remember to keep it simple and set up a couple of key measures if you are new to this. You can easily put it into a spreadsheet and get graphs so that you can see where you spent the time and what has resulted.
Of course some activities build over time, but you can generally see the correlation between where you spent your energy and the results achieved quite easily.
How do you allocate your time with marketing tactics and if you have any tips, please leave a comment and share them with us.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rebecca Sugrue and Pawel Grabowski, Susan Oakes. Susan Oakes said: Investing Your Time on Marketing Tactics Wisely http://bit.ly/bovIvf [...]
I run into many designers and even musicians that never make time for their marketing tactics. They worry more about the work and neglect what’s probably the most important thing for their business. You are absolutely right. We can’t do this, when the possibility of losing awareness is so high. The world we live is moving at a faster pace and keeping up with it is a job in itself. I call this building assets. Doing the work is part of the job, but building assets that will work for you while you tend to clients and networking needs to be established. And, like you said, it has to been by allocating time and making some decisions. Great post, Susan!
Dennis Salvatier recently posted..3 Ways to Enjoy the LA Art Walk
Hi Dennis,
Do like the term building assets and you are so right. I have a saying which I use in workshops or webinars – out of sight, out of mind, out of business. Your point about the world moving fast is probably only going to continue and I hate to see small businesses put themselves into a postion of lots of work coming in and then nothing. Makes it too hard to pay the bills.
Investing Your Marketing Time Wisely…
The number of marketing tactics you can action today that take up your time versus money continues to grow. Are you getting the return you want or are you just eating up that precious thing called time? Here are a couple of things to consider….
Networking and follow-up are two marketing tactics that many people do ONLY when their business is either totally down or way up there. Either way, ineffective.
When I am the most productive, is when I schedule these actions just like scheduling appointments. I find that when I plan, it may not pan out; but when I’m scheduling such activities, I do some pedaling.
Thanks for the thinking points this morning.
Patricia Weber recently posted..Top ten feeble follow-up attempts to fathom
Hi Patricia,
Very true about schedulling. It is much harder to ignore them when it is written down.
I was just thinking about this the other day. When things get busy you still need to allocate time to getting your name out there and procuring new business. It is vital to answer all communications that come in immediately (or at least within 24 hours). It can seem like you don’t have time to email with people, but you must make time to do so. If you drop that vital link to people, it is hard to rebuild.
Hi Laura,
Id does take more effort to rebuild. It is like many things if you just put them off instead of doing a little at a time it can take a bigger effort just to get back to where you were. Your example of communication is one most of us can relate to especially when the inbox just gets bigger.
Sage advice Susan! Your post reminds me of two popular sayings:
Forgetting to incorporate marketing into our routines would be “penny wise, pound foolish”!
Marketing is the “gift that keeps on giving”!
Keyuri Joshi (on the ball parent coach) recently posted..Pen- Paper and Parenting
Hi Keyuri,
Like those saying and so very true not to forget them.
Hi Susan. TIME is ABSOLUTELY the most important thing to include in your marketing budget! It is something we all need more of an none of us have enough of. Still trying to perfect my clone machine invention
I also agree that follow-up is really important too. I try to make sure I follow-up with every email I get (except the spam ones) because I think it is very important to either make or keep that connection. I am a firm believer in the importance of relationship building 
Julie Weishaar recently posted..Keeping up with Technology- Survival of the Fittest
Hi Julie,
When you have completed the clone machine can you do one for me as well. Would be a winner. We can forget the the people who are expecting the email or follow up will remeber we didn’t take the time even if we have a valid reason.
Susan, when I perfect it I promise I will make one for you
Julie Weishaar recently posted..Keeping up with Technology- Survival of the Fittest
Excellent Julie
When I started to allocate time, specifically the two hours from 8 – 10pm each evening, to my blog, it really helped. Having a set part of the day, for one specific and focused tasked has improved the quality of my blog and made me feel more organized.
I think you made a some very good points. Excellent post.
Hi Brian,
That is a great addition to this post and one we can learn from. It sure beats multi tasking.
Having just took nearly a two week break from most of my marketing activites to meet a client deadline, I can really identify with this advice.
It really can be a set back in so many ways if you fail to put some time into that marketing.
Hi Alastair,
I think we can all relate to your situation. Good to see you back commenting.
Good post Susan. How are you getting the return you want in as little time as possible?
Catarina Alexon recently posted..Communication – the key to harvesting ideas
Hi Catarina,
It is not always as little time as possible rather than what I can achieve in the hours I have. Over time I have worked out what gets results and then see how it can be done better or quicker. Tracking is a big one and reviewing the activities. I also make sure all the activities are matched up and are specific to the objective so I am not wasting time on a nice to do activities or ones that don’t work together.
I hope that answers your question, if not let me know.
One of the main ways I gauge whether or not I have been presenting myself well enough is through analytics.
Not just how much traffic, but how low the bounce rate is, and more importantly, WHERE that traffic is coming from.
This can tell you a lot about how well you are reaching your target audience.
You are very right in emphasizing how important it is to always give your marketing some time in order for it to be effective. The biggest problem for me is that the amount of time I can spare is oftentimes abysmally small.
Hi Paul,
Very true about analytics and thanks for pointing it out as I feel many still do not do the type of analysis you mentioned. The time may be small but if it is focussed then it is a lot better than spending more time on lots of activities that do not produce any result.
In some cases, business owners just do not enjoy some of the marketing work that they have to do. So Another suggestion is to outsource to a freelance marketer to benefit from their expertise at a lower cost. Since you are working with freelancers, they are more flexible and willing to work out a fair agreement with you that is tied to an ROI.
Video Traffic Bro Matt White recently posted..Website Design Basics
Hi Matt,
That is true and another option for small businesses.
Hi Susan,
I came to marketing AFTER I spent 5 years as a quota carrying salesperson. I always made my quota because, early on, someone told me you had to plan your work and work your plan. The advice was once you quit putting effort into lead generation at the top of your funnel, you would see the eventual negative result in the bottom of your funnel when you had to close business. I never forgot that lesson and apply it to my marketing. Sometimes that means getting up at 4:00 am to get a blog post out and I never seem to get a lunch hour. You know what? I have a steady flow of business, too.
Great advice, once again.
Hi Sarah,
Great example and learnings from your sales background. You do deserve the success you are having and the effort is certainly paying off.
Susan,
I love your idea of using a spreadsheet to track time. That’s actually something that I do. Just a simple entry when you spend time promoting a marketing effort or building relationships can really help you stay on track. They say if you don’t have work now to look back to what you were doing 6 months ago. If you know what is working and what isn’t, you can really streamline your marketing efforts and focus on those that generate the best results. – Great post!
Sherryl Perry recently posted..4 Basic Steps to Better Blogging- Better Branding and More Business
Hi Sherryl,
It does take the subjectivity out of it and as you said you can look back and see what you were doing. With your spreadsheet do you use it to track time against specific activities or like a timesheet?
It’s mainly not for time except if I’m working on a client project but I will make an entry if I’ve spent a significant amount of time for example if I’ve spent 2-hours commenting on blogs or promoting a recent post.
Recently, I’ve pulled all of my social networking activity from my main worksheet and created a separate one. That way, I can easily track promotion for each of my posts. When I post a new article, I’ll copy and paste the lines. It also helps so that I don’t forget what I’ve submitted it to and I don’t waste time figuring out what category I’ve posted it to. If I start getting comments on old posts, I can quickly check my spreadsheet and see what I’ve done to promote it.
Sherryl Perry recently posted..Can You Run Pay-Per-Click Ads Without Breaking the Piggy Bank
Hi Sherryl,
Thanks for sharing what you do and great tips.
It can be feast or famine if you are not careful. A steady marketing effort keeps a baseline of activity. When there is time you can spike out more effort to get the process moving faster. Good points.
Rob
Rob Berman recently posted..Differentiated Commodity Products Drive Profits
Hi Rob,
Very true regarding feast or famine and that becomes in my mind a little tiring over time. With so much talk and information about marketing these days we can easily forget about having a steady marketing effort which does work.
Thanks for your comment.
Marketing is not easy. You should enough idea how to work with it.
Ron from Language School Bournemouth recently posted..Practice What you Have Learnt
At first marketing can seem a little daunting but it does get easier.
Susan,
All good thoughts. Appreciate the clean, concise way in which you express standard marketing wisdom. With regard to scheduling time for marketing, I have found that blocking out half a day a week to schedule tweets, work on a newsletter, build social network, etc. is much more efficient for me than breaking into each day’s workload.
Hi Kate,
Appreciate your comment. There is no one way to be effective and it is good you have found the one that suits you. It would allow you to focus rather than doing a little bit when you find time.