The other day another small business owner complained to me that her business had picked up, but she was almost too rushed to get her customer’s work done. I’d have laughed at the thought of being too busy to actually service a customer, but I could tell she was really frustrated and totally serious.
As I listened, I realized that her problem was one I’ve been seeing lately, especially among service professionals. She is actually marketing too much! Or, to say it more succinctly, she is wasting some of her precious time marketing in ways that don’t serve her business.
Here are the traits I see in the service professionals who are marketing too much:
- They are bright and have a strong desire to do well.
- They listen to the latest trends in marketing and work to apply what they hear to their businesses.
- Their marketing is done from a crisis platform – they hear about something they should be doing and race to implement the new thing without an overall perspective or plan.
- They handle most of their marketing efforts themselves, so anything new they adopt is, by default, only half understood and their efforts are not to a level where they will see big results (because of their lack of time, not because they are lazy).
- They are infamous for never stopping to measure the results of their feverish marketing activities.
There’s one key element of marketing that these worn-out small business owners have failed to use, and that is to put your marketing efforts only into the places that matter most for your business. Don’t try every new trick that comes out of the bag. Think it through, experiment a little if it makes sense, and evaluate success with real numbers. It’s a total waste of your time and money to market where your prospects aren’t.
I’ve just launched a brand new training product for you about this very topic. It’s called How To Create Step By Step Marketing Campaigns for Your Small Business and it teaches you my fail-safe 6-step planning system. You can check it out at this link: https://confidentmarketer.com/business-products/marketing-campaign/
Don’t be marketing too much – you don’t have the time and won’t see a good result. Do just enough, at the right time, and in the right places. I’ll show you how.
I so agree. There are so many ways to market that we sometimes focus on being a part of the latest trend instead of marketing based on our market and ideal client.
Yes, one must measure when they are spending time and money on any type of marketing.
If not, how else do you know if you are doing something which is effective? Right On!
Sue, your new product sounds perfect for the service-oriented biz owner who gets overwhelmed by doing the wrong marketing and not having a plan
“They are infamous for never stopping to measure the results of their feverish marketing activities.” This is the statistical part that I personally don’t like and the advice I’ve received is so confusing. How do I measure my conversion rates? I’ve been told google analytics and wordpress plugins, and many more I’m sure, but the reality is for people like me, who are not techies, I’ve yet to learn a simple or clear method for determining the traffic and conversion rates of my social media, blogs, websites, and probably a few things I haven’t thought of.
Definitely something to think about. Since following you I’ve become more aware of the need to stop and evaluate what I’m doing. This is a really thought provoking piece, thanks for sharing.
Thanks, Mira, for letting me know that I’m impacting your thinking about your business. I’m honored!
Sue
Good advice. Your time is too precious not to have a focused effort.
Sue, first of all thank you for taking my call recently. Secondly, I appreciate your thoughtful advice. I wonder if we all can be guilty of “doing too much” sometimes?