Making Time for Small Business Marketing

Startup Sunday

How do you balance small business marketing with ongoing projects you must complete? (Not to mention living your life.)

Whenever business is booming, I look forward to an ebb in the workload so I can catch my breath. But recently, I was down to only one short-term deadline -- and I found I was busier than ever. Turns out, small business marketing can take more time than actually doing the work!

Then, work started to pick up again and I was faced with a dilemma: four proposals due to potential clients at the same time I had two projects pending for existing customers. I couldn't completely drop the speculative work, or I would cut off the pipeline for future business. But I also want to give current clients at least as much attention (ideally more) than I devote to potential clients and small business marketing.

I ended up pulling a couple of very late nights of work. And now that I've just about caught up, I want to do my best to avoid a collision of existing and prospective work in the future. So I've resolved to get small business marketing under control by:

Building in time for proposals. When I launched my small business, my unofficial board of advisers told me to devote a third of my time to small business marketing. I haven't needed to spend quite so much time courting new clients, but even if I spend one-fifth of my time on development, that's one day a week. I had been setting aside a half-day but now will expand it to a full day. It may seem counterintuitive, but by building marketing into my weekly routine, I expect that my work flow will be more even -- I'll generate new business along the way rather than in one big push when I've got nothing else on my plate.

Stretching deadlines. This is one of my worst failings as an entrepreneur. When I agree to complete an assignment for a client, I invariably offer to finish it by the earliest date I could imagine being done. I just love to check things off my list -- it makes me uneasy to have a deadline hanging over my head. Big mistake. Instead, I'm going to stay quiet until the client tells me when the project is needed, and most likely win myself a week or two grace period. I can always finish the work sooner, and that gives me breathing room to work on small business marketing in the meantime.

Saying no when needed. One reason that I got so overloaded with work and speculative proposals is that I agreed to take on one new client outside my usual area of expertise, as well as a proposal that was much more work than usual. Next time, I'll just say no. Better to focus on the things that you do well than to stretch yourself thin by expanding into a new area before you have the resources to handle it.

These are far from perfect solutions, but at least it's a start. I'd love to hear your strategies for balancing small business marketing with ongoing work.

Comments

[Gavin Head]

Those are some good tips on how a small business owner can manage his or her time better. But I'm wondering if you (or someone like you) couldn't make better use of your time by outsourcing your marketing. Why wouldn't you hire someone to do your marketing for you? It sounds like your plate is pretty full when you are working with clients and that there is too much ebb and flow in your workload. Was your time well spent when you took on that client that was outside of your usual area of expertise? Unless marketing is in your area of expertise, you put yourself in the same situation when you do your own marketing. Why not have someone else do your marketing for you so you can concentrate on serving client needs and being more productive and efficient?