“Marketing is and must become a habitual activity in your business. You must live by the marketing calendar or die by the lack of time available to complete the greasing of the squeaky wheel.
The only way to find time for marketing is to plan for it. Create a marketing theme for every month of the year and then build marketing activities on a daily and weekly basis around the theme.
You know you need to be sending out more press releases and building relationships with key journalists in your industry – make that September’s theme and do it. You know you need to build a network of strategic partners to make your referral leads really soar – make that October’s theme. You know you need a blog, you need to start blogging as a part of your Internet presence – make that November’s theme…
That’s how you make time for marketing, that’s how you build marketing momentum and that’s how you make marketing expand to fill the time available for its completion.”
One of the reasons small business people often act like “a deer in the headlights” when it comes to marketing is that it can appear such a large and impressive task, something intimidating enough to requre the services of one of the big New York or West Coast marketing firms. It doesn’t have to be, particularly on the web. Marketing is not just the roll out of a new Mercedes or a Gucci or even a Starbucks campaign. Marketing is also a lot of small actions which, taken together, can create awareness for your business or your brand.
Marketing can be a simple press release sent out on the web, but reaching hundreds of websites and news sources. Marketing can be getting your product mentioned or, one by one, developing links to your website. Marketing is anything that gets out the word about you and your product and gets people to try it. Think of it as Starbucks thinks of a $5 coupon for coffee……something small and manageable which will encourage a customer to walk through the door. And, as enough customers do, you will build momentum, and increase the scale of your marketing. The important thing is to start and make it a regular practice, part of your every day, week or month routine.
