The teacher part of me loves doing live coaching. In the past at my live SHIFT events, audience members would fill out an application and I would choose 3-4 attendees to help them with their marketing live on the stage, in the moment.
One of the most memorable was a particular attendee (I call her Jackie). I asked her to summarize for the audience her biggest marketing challenge. She answered, “I don’t do any marketing because I don’t have any time to do it!”.
YIKES. I was almost speechless but I knew what had to change for Jackie so that she could not only have more time for marketing but earn more at the same time.
Over the years, time and time again, I’ve met business owners who tell me they don’t have time for marketing. They seem to have so many distractions including bookkeeping, serving clients, endless to-do lists, etc. They seem to be so busy that marketing is pushed to the bottom of their To-Do lists.
And it doesn’t seem to matter the size of the business or type of business – I’ve heard this from 6-figure and 7-figure business owners in over 20+ industries!
Not making time for marketing is a BIG problem …… because over time, if you continue to ignore marketing, week after week, month after month, then you jeopardize the future growth of your business.
The purpose of marketing, and marketing’s #1 job, is to bring you a consistent stream of qualified leads which you can later convert into customers. Marketing is the precursor to sales.
So, if you ignore marketing or push it to the bottom of your priority list, you will jeopardize your future business growth. I’m pretty sure that’s not what you want!
How can you make more time for your marketing? There are several ways that I helped Jackie make more time for her marketing and earn more at the same time:
1. She systematized some of the work she was doing with each client. With every client, there were always some activities and work that was repetitive from client to client. She was able to turn this into a short video series she would give them for homework thus reducing time with each client.
Is there work you do with clients that’s repetitive that you could turn into a video series, checklist, or pdf that you could give them to work on before or after seeing you?
2. While working with me, she raised her fees and repackaged her offer so that instead of charging per hour, she charged for the tremendous value of her work. This increase in fees allowed her to stop working weekends!
Could you possibly repackage your service, program or product so that you would have more profits and work less?
3. Her increased fees allowed her to hire additional support. Very often hiring additional support is another challenge for business owners. After all, our business is our baby and it’s often difficult to delegate. Over the years, I’ve learned that sometimes the easiest way to free up more time is to hire help at home i.e. a housekeeper. Probably the 2nd easiest support to hire is a bookkeeper – while I’m sure many of you ‘can’ do your bookkeeping, it’s not the best use of your time.
Early in my coaching career, I realized that I could make more money (and help more people) when I focused on teaching/speaking. Although I was doing my bookkeeping, a knowledgeable bookkeeper could do it in half the time I was devoting to it.
What support do you need to help you make more time for more marketing?
4. One of the easiest ways for Jackie to make more time for marketing was to prioritize marketing and actually schedule time in her calendar for marketing activities. Committing to prioritizing marketing activities and setting aside specific time for those activities will drive future sales and revenue.
Do you have a specific time allocated in your calendar for marketing activities?
Every Monday, I block time in my calendar to write this blog, create social media posts and review my marketing activities for the week. Monday is marketing day! I don’t allow client calls; I don’t answer my phone if I’m writing. Marketing takes priority! (You can see that I even colour code my marketing).
It’s not easy for most business owners to make time for marketing! There seems to be so many demands.
So, what happened to Jackie from the audience at SHIFT? While working with me, Jackie learned to use the 5-S’s: strategy, stand out, systems, scale, support. That’s the recipe to #earnmoreworkless!
In case you missed them, here are some other articles on similar topics:
Promote Yourself to CEO (here)
Make More Time & More Money (here)
YOU CAN DO THIS
Diana
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