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    • Wed Sep 03, 2008

    I Don’t Have Time for Marketing

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    The preposterous sounding title of this post is a direct quote from the lips of many a small business owner I have encountered. The root of this problem of course can be summed up nicely in something known as Parkinson’s Law

    Parkinson’s Law is the adage that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” It was first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, appearing as the first sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955.

    The Law is as alive and well in the small business as it may be in the halls of the largest bureaucracy on the planet. So, the key to effective marketing may simply be a matter of defining the right work to fill up the time available.

    Marketing is and must become a habitual activity in your business. You must live by the marketing calendar or die by the lack of time available to complete the greasing of the squeaky wheel.

    The only way to find time for marketing is to plan for it. Create a marketing theme for every month of the year and then build marketing activities on a daily and weekly basis around the theme.

    You know you need to be sending out more press releases and building relationships with key journalists in your industry – make that September’s theme and do it. You know you need to build a network of strategic partners to make your referral leads really soar – make that October’s theme. You know you need a blog, you need to start blogging as a part of your Internet presence – make that November’s theme.

    Create the biggest, most hard to ignore wall calendar you can find and post your year of marketing themes. Then break each month down into the action steps needed to make progress on the monthly theme. Finally, assign yourself or someone on your team daily action steps, appointments really, and then complete the daily marketing action before you pass Go or return another email.

    That’s how you make time for marketing, that’s how you build marketing momentum and that’s how you make marketing expand to fill the time available for its completion.

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    Posted by: John Jantsch on Sep 03, 08 | 7:07 am
    Category: Duct Tape Marketing | Tags: , , , ,

    Comments
    « | Home | »
    • AMEN! We all get 24 hours in a day. There's no "extra" time for anyone. The easiest way to start marketing with a low-money investment is to spend time marketing 30 min to 1 hour a day. There's no workaround. You have to spend your time, your money or both. You need marketing to generate sales, and you need sales to fund marketing.

      Adrianne Machina, DTM Coach
      http://TornadoMktg.com
    • I agree that I need to make the time for marketing, but I don't understand how creating themes for months would help.

      Shouldn't I release a press release anytime during the year when I have something newsworthy?

      Shouldn't I be blogging all year round?

      There's something that I'm missing here.
    • John Jantsch
      @Sean - thanks for pointing out the need for additional clarity - yes, those are indeed year round activities, but people never get around to setting up the blog in the first place and doing all the stuff to get it going right - so, extra focus for one month adds that to your marketing arsenal the right way.

      Same goes for each month - build a media list, research story angles, set-up an account with PRWeb and learn how to use it, create the internal process for writing and sending monthly news releases - that's the focus for PR month, but then your ongoing tactics fall from your initial month's work.
    • I find that there can be some resistance to creating a marketing calendar from small businesses.

      It forces people to think ahead and hold themselves accountable for inputs into the marketing process and the results that come out the other end.

      I must blog about this myself John although I do wonder whether eventually, even the worst victim of Parkinson's Law won't have "all the time in the world".
    • One sweet thing about blogging is that it 'keeps on ticking' for me for a long time after first posted. That puts a different spin on blog marketing. I've had people contact me after considerable time had passed on a marketing blog.
    • I like your idea of themes. If one of the themes works especially well, it is something to incorporate on a daily basis. If not, at least I had the chance to test the waters and learn from it.
    • I like the idea of theming the months. John, to your clarification in your comment, it's getting the ball rolling, starting the tactic, that is often time the hardest hill to climb (or at least easiest to put off).

      At the same time, scheduling the calendar as a whole is also crucially important. I find it so easy to launch something today only to forget about it in a month, which never really gives it the repetition and attention that it needs to succeed. Most businesses would be better off picking fewer strategies and doing them to the full than zig zagging their way through a year, reacting at every little turn.
    • I think the key point for all small business owners to know is if you are not spending time on marketing it’s OK… Just realize your top competitors are! Over time those competitors will market the business from you.

      I would also add the obvious strategy of a hiring a marketing firm, consultant, coach, or buying a marketing system. These strategies should help with the lack of time mentality.
    • Right on, John! Marketing activities should be built right into daily tasks. Failure to market continuously leads to the Feast and Famine cycle. It's too easy to focus just on current work orders when the business gets busy, but then they get filled and suddenly the business owner is looking at an empty order desk. And marketing when you're panicking seldom attracts the best customers.
    • John,
      Your post makes me think of the quote
      "What get's measured gets done"
      We need to measure out our time to SCHEDULE into Outlook our marketing activities...and not just schedule them....DO THEM!

      Regards,
      Mike Saunders
      www.MarketingHuddle.com
    • I had a very interesting meeting today with a woman who is in the same business as me [network marketing...hence "owner" of her own business] - we met at a regional meeting. Her business has stalled because she doesn't know about marketing...I shared with her some of my plans and current activity and she got inspired and energized. What this tells me is that there are small businesses out there [1 person businesses] whose owners don't know how to begin. A themed calendar is an awesome idea, but these folks don't even know what themes they need, and they don't know where to find the knowledge to help them. It could be the mantra of "I don't have time for marketing" is also a reflection of a frustration over not knowing what marketing to do. - Just a thought. - Linda
    • Great article…I like your calendar idea.
    • John,

      Sometimes it’s like you’re watching my business. You seem to know what’s going on all the time. I’ve been pretty busy with my business. Some of what I’ve been doing is the actual work that generates my paid for service, some marketing.

      I wanted to confirm that marketing your business does generate more business and lack of marketing may cause your business to completely dry up. Here’s what happened to me...

      For the last 2 years I’ve been so busy with work that I had not done any marketing to speak of. I was too busy and it didn’t seem to matter because my phone kept ringing and the work kept coming in. Then it hit. The slow down this summer. The phone wasn’t ringing, I was mostly out of work and my bills were still coming in. When this realization hit I knew I had made a mistake. Had I been marketing regularly I don’t think the slow down would have ever came. At the very least I would have known that I was doing everything I could to generate new business. So hear I am sitting at the end of three slow months. For the last six weeks I’ve been marketing and selling like it’s my full time job. The future is looking very bright. My August billings were almost back to an acceptable level. Looking forward looks good too.

      So I learn best from making mistakes. Moving forward marketing will be in my plan, schedule and on my calendar.
    • John

      I love your idea about wallboarding monthly marketing themes too, and I'm going to incorporate it in the business plan I'm formulating (in 8 1/2 x 11 format). Marketing should be the beachhead of any product introduction. I have to sheepishly admit marketing usually is the last of my boats to come ashore.

      Thanks for the suggestions and the focusing strategy.
    • you know, the funny thing is that people still don't realise that when you start a business for yourself, you become a marketer, not a specialist in what your business is about. You are the face of your business, and you need to sell it and share it. At least 80-90% of your activities should be marketing activities. One of the first things I did is to download a yearly calender, with all the special days on it. When doing pr, you need to take the ride with the media, it's kind of like blogging. You are just replying to what is happening in the world, and making sure your business can work around it. Fantastic post, and I hope it has helped plenty of people see that marketing activities should be up very high on your priority list!
    • Fantastic post! I can't remember where I read it....but artist's like myself should spend 10% of their time creating and 50-60% marketing themselves and their business. Like Nike says, "Just Do It"!
    • It's very important to stick to your marketing schedule. If you're just starting don't make a crazy schedule you know you're not going to stick to. It's also OK to adjust your schedule from time to time, but the main thing is to be consistent. There's also a great service that helps connect subject matter experts who are looking for publicity with journalists http://prleads.com/.
    • pamslim
      Awesome post. I may snag it as a sidebar for the book, w/your permission of course! I'll run it by you if I do.

      Whenever people tell me they are too busy to market (after calling me stressed that they don't have any clients), I always wonder what else could be more important than getting clients or customers.

      My mantra this week is "it's the business model, stupid!" and this includes a solid strategy and calendar of tactical activities.
    • @Pamela - Dead on... even when you have enough clients, you always need time for marketing.!
    • Since I have a home-based business, I've found that I have to block out my time or there would never be time for family, housework, socializing, or myself. So I really like the idea of blocking out time to focus on a particular marketing emphasis. I think first, though, I need to block out a particular part of each week for planning. Otherwise, the calendar would never be built in the first place.
    • bbmarketingplus
      It's funny, we were just discussing this yesterday. Most people generally don't find time for things that aren't a priority.

      Most people theoretically know that marketing is important, they believe other things are more important. For some people, it's because they have business and don't realize that marketing can help them change a premium for their goods and services if they can stoke up demand.

      For the rest, marketing often takes a back seat because business owners find it overwhelming or because it's hard for them to connect specific marketing efforts with results.

      Here are some thoughts. Try to connect the dots between activity and results. Figure out how you'll measure success and set up systems that will help you do so. Not all activities lend themselves to easy measurement, but it may make sense to start with those that do--such as direct marketing.

      For businesses that find marketing difficult, one alternative is to outsource the parts that are hard. Another thing is to put a toe in the water--rather than getting overwhelmed by trying to do it all.

      As John notes, it's important that you do whatever you do regularly and consistently to make an impact. Start with things that you don't mind doing and commit to them. Hopefully, as these activities move beyond startup, they'll be easier to complete because you'll have an infrastructure. Also, as you see results, you'll add other activities to your repertoire.
    • Hey John, Love this post and totally agree that marketing tasks have to be broken up into smaller chunks. I'd like to see you write a post about using virtual assistants including the latest trend of using assistants from India who cost much less than those in the US. Thanks for your consideration!

      Angie A. Swartz, Founder, Six Figure Moms Club
      www.SixFigureMomsClub.com
    • This is nice article, well i want know how the monthly calender will helpful when you are planning marketing online through tactics like SEO which requires lil bit time to be in market, and if some one fails for marketing strategy will not get any more good results. Still for offline marketing its the very good ideas.
    • It's insane when small business owners don't realise that their primary role is that of marketer.. They might run a business, but all they'll be doing is running it into the ground if they don't market it right, put reall effort into the marketing of it..
      Great post John.. One of my favourites thus far
    • Saying you have no time for marketing (of some kind) is the equivalent of saying you have no time for your business to succeed.
    • It is extremely important that you market your product well. Effective marketing makes a bad product decent, and a decent product fantastic. If you love marketing, you should get into it! Me and my friend love it so much, that we are thinking of starting a marketing company in the near future. I also love to help people out, so if you have any questions about anything, or need some advice, you can follow me @Garbarrassing on Twitter. Love the post John.
    • Thanks for that. In the middle of creating a publishing schedule calendar for my blog articles which is helping keep me producing good content without a last minute rush . Generally scheduling time for those important but not urgent tasks is a good thing.

      As well as the aspect of helping make time, creating a calendar entry can help you break tasks down into small parts which makes them less of a pain.

      All I have to do is work out how to do this with my accounts!
    • I wall board everything. I have an entire wall dedicated to what I need to be doing. Seriously, from top to bottom, from left to right the entire wall is dedicated to where I am in certain projects and what needs to be done next.

      I used to do everything on notepads and postit notes. I spent more time tracking down and reorganizing my notes than any thing else.
    • Dan
      Great article. If you are not spending at least 60% of your time on marketing, you are heading to problems down the road.

      If you would like a tool to manage your small business activities and Projects, you can use this aplication:

      http://www.Gtdagenda.com

      You can use it to manage and prioritize your Goals (for business but also in other areas of your life), Projects and Tasks. It has a Checklists section, for the routines and repetitive activities that any business has to do. Also, it features a Schedules section and a Calendar, for scheduling you time and activities.

      Some features from GTD are also present, like Contexts and Next Actions.

      And it's available on the mobile phone too, so you can access it from anywhere.
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