Marketing is one of the first things to get cut when professionals get busy—think a lawyer in trial or an accountant during tax season. Or, you may be one of the lucky ones whose phone doesn’t stop ringing with new business. Whether you are busy, or you have too much business to handle, this is the best time to market. While it may seem counterintuitive, these times are the best time to market because one day, you won’t be as busy or business won’t be flying through the door, and you need to plant the seeds now for when that time comes. Marketing during busy times gives you security, and successful marketing hinges on consistent, long-term effort.
Luckily, marketing is flexible. It doesn’t demand all your time, all the time—only as much as you have. And when you’re short on time, there are easy ways to continue working toward your marketing and business development goals. Here are six of our tips for continuing to market during busy times.
Make your time more impactful.
When you have a lot on your plate, firing off emails seems like the most efficient way to nurture leads. But if you’re spending time each week writing emails that don’t go anywhere, focus on contacting fewer people in a more impactful way. Schedule a call, Zoom or in-person meeting instead of just sending a note. Consider going to an industry conference to get in front of the right people versus a connection on LinkedIn. While these events may take more time in the short term, your time and energy will be more focused on impactful tactics that are more likely to bear fruit.
Outsmart your procrastination.
We all procrastinate. It’s in our nature. But there are ways we can encourage ourselves to do things we may not want to do—just find the ways that work. If you block out an hour of marketing time on your calendar each week, will you stick to it? What if that hour happens at your favorite coffee shop? If you pay for a conference up front, will the dread of losing the deposit force you to go? Will a marketing accountability buddy make the difference for you? These techniques become even more important when it’s tempting to drop marketing efforts entirely. Experiment and see which ones will keep you accountable even during the busy season.
Don’t reinvent the wheel.
The secret of successful marketers? They don’t do everything (or even most things) from scratch. When you’re short on time, you can get by for weeks without creating any original marketing content. Your firm, colleagues, and industry thought leaders are already putting out high-quality content through social media, email, and blogs. You can simply share or repost their content with a brief note from you to personalize it. In the same vein, you can always repurpose things you’ve already done. Slides from a conference presentation can become a social media post, case research can become an email advisory to clients, notes from a webinar can become an article.
Get others to market for you.
The best marketing is marketing you don’t have to do at all. For example, ask a client for a testimonial for your LinkedIn, website, or Google page. Other staff members, such as junior staff, and assistants can also support marketing efforts by inputting contact information into your database, keeping tabs on conference dates and deadlines, posting to your social media, etc. You can also hire an internal marketing person or agency to take the lion’s share of marketing off your plate.
When you really don’t have time, micro-market.
When your schedule is absolutely packed, writing a 1,000-word article or dedicating an afternoon to lead generation isn’t going to happen. Instead, pare down your overall marketing goals into micro-marketing: write a one- or two-sentence social media post; shoot a quick thank you email to a client; finish one 10-minute task on your to-do list. All that matters is that you keep the momentum going.
Contact a Premier Los Angeles Marketing and PR Firm Today
At Berbay Marketing & PR, we have almost 30 years of experience providing full-service marketing solutions for our clients. Let us cross marketing off of your to-do list.
Contact Berbay at 310-405-7343 or info@berbay.com.
