Many business owners put a halt on their marketing activities when they get busy, simply because they don’t have enough time to devote to it. Sound familiar? Either that, or their marketing activities are primarily driven by their cashflow. Go on. Think about it. Is yours?

As a marketing consultant, I can tell you that stop/start marketing rarely ever works, and especially when the economy is a downturn, it’s crucial to think long term and put yourself in a good position for the future through continued marketing.

Marketing Has No Endpoint.

The best approach to marketing is to be consistent and create systems and processes that will help you deliver your content consistently without draining you or your funds during busy periods.

In a previous post we talked about how to make content creation manageable, and today we’re zoning in on the importance of planning and your mindset towards marketing. Read on because I will leave you with a tangible suggestion that you can start to action from tomorrow in order to boost your business and ramp up your marketing activities.

When planning your marketing, don’t plan for today, plan for tomorrow.

Imagine if you had 10 potential clients considering your products/services/workshops/proposals at any given point in time to ensure you have a steady flow of work coming in the following month? Sound exciting? Wouldn’t this be ideal? For this, you need to be consistent about reaching your audience with your marketing message.

Yes, I understand that when things are tight financially, you may have to cut back on a few marketing activities, but you can also use the ‘extra’ time when you aren’t ‘delivering’ your products or services, to roll up your sleeves and do more of the marketing that requires your time and energy and not necessarily your money.

How to smooth out the peaks and troughs of business

Consistent and strategic marketing brings consistent results. If you tend towards stop/start marketing, start taking a long-term view about your marketing because the work you put in today is what is going to get you your clients tomorrow.

“A change in your mindset is the first step towards ending the stop/start marketing cycle”.

Successful businesses are usually good marketers, and you can master the process too

The lack of quality time dedicated to the process is one of the biggest reasons for businesses failing to market themselves. They know it’s important, but haven’t planned out how they will dedicate enough time each day and each week to market their products and services. In fact, the time commitment is often more critical than the money spent. Marketing determines the long-term success of your business.

“Marketing needs to become as important as opening the doors of your business in the morning. Make it part of your routine.”

Another factor is that the average business owner doesn’t know how to market.

They are good at what they do, but not at marketing.

In situations like this, you can also hire a marketing consultant to assess your current marketing and/or show you the way and teach you the basics, (something I do regularly for clients) but regardless of how you improve your skills, the point is that you need to commit time – quality time – (not when you are exhausted) to marketing.

One tangible change you should make to your schedule NOW

So now that we’ve addressed your mindset towards marketing, let me leave you with one suggestion. I’m going to advise one fundamental change. Take yourself out of your daily routine for 1 hour each morning (say at 10am) where you do nothing, but focus on growing your business.

This simple suggestion, put into practice has produced amazing and quite instant results for many of my clients. After several weeks of working to this ‘new’ schedule, many of them indicated that they were able to finally complete business development projects that they once started, make solid plans and action their marketing activities, giving their business the boost it needed.

Many came back to say that the trick was in treating marketing as a priority and factoring it into their daily/weekly schedules. Having experienced the benefits firsthand, they said they would never turn back.