Not Enough Time Or Money For Marketing?

I’m still on a quest to find the biggest marketing challenge for business owners. Today I’m addressing the lack of time and money issue.

Challenge: Not enough time or money to spend on marketing

There’s no easy way to deal with this really, either it’s a priority or it isn’t. Having enough time and money to do everything you need to are a constant challenge for all business owners, this never changes. What does change are priorities.

If marketing your business is critical to getting a constant flow of prospective clients then you make it a priority. We all struggle getting this balance right: working in your business for your clients and working on your business to make it grow.

One of my favourite mottos is “a little bit everyday goes a long way”

Spending a little bit of time on marketing your business everyday or every week can help enormously. It’s the consistency more than anything that makes the biggest impact.

Tips:

Plan out your marketing schedule for the year so your goals, the strategies you’ll use to achieve them, the activities you need to undertake and when. And then break them down into monthly/weekly/daily activities.

The marketing activities you undertake should cover 3 areas:

– communicating with your existing client base

– outreach to gain new clients

– showcasing your expertise or product offering

Planning out what needs to be done on a daily basis just helps you plan your day.

Breakdown what it costs to undertake those activities on a monthly/ weekly/daily basis and assign them to new business you gained through them so you can assess the real return on your investment.

Make sure your can track the effectiveness of your marketing so you know what works and what doesn’t and can change if need be. I would suggest giving any new activity a good 3 months to see it’s effectiveness. There’s nothing worst than spending resources on something that isn’t working.

If all else fails outsourcing your marketing is always an option, particularly if your business has got to a size where you can’t do it all yourself and you need to bring some support. Get in touch if you need some help planning out your marketing, or indeed you now need to bring expertise in to help with the direction and implementation of your plan for you.

So, what’s your biggest marketing challenge? Has it changed for you over the years?

Add a comment in the box below and let me know.