3 Easy Tips to Find Time to Market Your Small Business
June 6, 2011
I wrote a blog a couple of weeks ago called “‘I don’t have a time’ is a lame excuse”… (for not Marketing your small business). I basically wrote that if we think something is important enough we’ll find the time to do it. And I know this because I do it all the time… I constantly say, “I don’t have time….” But what I realize is that really means either “I really don’t want to“ or “It just
isn’t a priority right now“, because trust me, If I REALLY want to do something, I’ll find the time. Am I right???
So with that blog post behind me, I started thinking: What I really need is not more time, but a way to manage the time I have more effectively. And I bet other small business owners could use the same thing! So, I asked my friend and colleague Sandy Stelter of Strategic Organizing Solutions (SOS) to give us some tips on how to manage our time better. Sandy is an expert in time management and small business productivity and a co author of the book “Get Organized Today”.
I hope you will apply these 3 easy steps in your own world so that you can find the time to market your business and become the small business you always dreamed of!
I don’t have time…
How many times do you find yourself saying these words…”I don’t have time to ….” You fill in the blank.
“I don’t have time to read.”
“I don’t have time to take a vacation.”
“I don’t have time to go to that networking event.”
“I don’t have time to write that article.”
Actually we do have the time if we step back and realize that we’re actually talking about managing our lives, not just our time. The lines are blurred between, home, work and leisure. It’s not clear where one ends and another begins.
So doing more important tasks with the time we have has become crucial. Once we set our goals, then planning and scheduling the tasks to meet those goals are the most important.
Here’s one thought that I find extremely helpful when I’m planning and scheduling my day.
Schedule your day around high-payoff activities. Whatever time is left over, schedule the low-priority activities then. I find it interesting that high-value activities do not proliferate as quickly as low-payoff items. I can find 101 little tiny low-payoff tasks to do instead of that one high-value activity.
For instance, rather than writing this article, I found myself reading email, balancing my checkbook (yes, I really do enjoy it), and updating Quickbooks. So here are three tips that help me schedule my day around the more important tasks and stay focused.
1. If the activity requires concentration, get away from the distractions in your office and on your desk. I listen to an instrumentals only radio station that I set up on Pandora.com (free version). No words, so I can’t sing along. No multitasking!
2. Establish deadlines for completing major portions of the big project. Chunk it into small units. I actually divided this task into two chunks – one was thinking and researching and the second was the actual writing.
3. Choose the time of day when you are most alert. There are two times a day that I’m alert and able to concentrate – mornings and then between 8:30pm-10pm. So I schedule many of my important tasks during those times. Notice when you are most alert and schedule your high payoff activities then. You’ll be amazed at the results!
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Sandy Stelter, Author and Owner of SOS – Strategic Organizing Solutions has worked with hundreds of clients to help them create and maintain a productive environment anywhere. SOS provides consultation and hands-on professional, customized, productivity coaching to individuals and businesses. Work toward your goals from an environment that supports you and who you want to be. For more information visit: http://www.sos.com
What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!! Leave your comments here.
By the way, if you liked this post, I’d really appreciate your Retweet!!! Thank you. 
How to Build Small Business Credibility Online
May 24, 2011
Below is a reprint of an article by Scott Kindred at Safehouse Web. He took a comment I posted on Facebook and turned it into a blog. I think he did a nice job of expanding on the subject and showing a very tactical view of how it’s done by sharing what he will do to promote his brand.
How to Build Your Business Credibility Online
by Scott Kindred of Safehouse Web
Starting today with small steps to build yourself and your business’ credibility is an easy thing to put off. Right? You may procrastinate as often as I do, but today is a new day! Yes, cliche, but true. This post is simply a quick and powerful way you can give your business a boost – TODAY. And in no more than 15 minutes of your valuable time, I say! 
So does Carloyn Higgins, President of Fortune Marketing Company:
“What are you doing to increase exposure for your business? Today, spend 15 minutes promoting your business.: comment on the walls of 5 target customers (especially B2B biz), comment on a blog related to your product or service, write a quick article, or answer a question in an onlne community. These activities boost awareness, increase credibility and lead to more customers!”
The truth is that these small steps, when done regularly and consistently over a period of time – let’s say 6 months for the sake of conversation – will produce measurable results. They will produce more traffic, more visitors to your website. I know because I have tried them myself and have seen a marked increase in website traffic, visitor quality and even a few business leads. Good stuff. I know because I continue to use them today; I want my business to keep growing and becoming more profitable.
Does that sound like something we have in common?
Below are my goals for today. I will accomplish them, and I’ll also do them again on my next appointed “rounds.” Take a look and start thinking about something similar for your business. Posting your ideas and results here is always welcomed!
Comment on the walls of 5 target customers:1. Freelance Switch
2. Pagelines
3. Cartoon Thunder
4. Big Brand System
5. Fortune Marketing Company
[Those are their websites. I will choose to post on their blog, forum, Facebook or Twitter, depending on what subject matter I can make the best contribution on.]
You can view the original post here and more of Safehouse Web’s blogs at: http://safehouseweb.com/exchange/
What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!! Leave your comments here.
By the way, if you liked this post, I’d really appreciate your Retweet!!! Thank you.
About Safehouse Web:
Safehouse Web is a small business focused on providing services to their peers. Building, deploying, managing and maintaining websites for small businesses is their primary purpose. With “service is our salesman” as a motto of their approach, you can be sure your business’ website will receive consistent and timely attention. The level of service they provide, and the reputation they develop with you, is what they stand upon to sell to other businesses like yours. You can visit Safehouse Web at: http://safehouseweb.com/
7 Reasons Why Your Marketing Plan Doesn’t Work
August 16, 2010
This article is a reprint from John Jantsch’s column at AMEX OPEN Forum from Sep 03, 2009. It’s Duct Tape Marketing straight from the the founder himself and I thought it was worth passing a long to my readers- it makes some excellent points and is full of great information.
Every business should operate with a set of plans – a plan for the business, a plan for cash, a plan for growth, and certainly a plan for marketing. Opening a business with n
o plan is kind of like driving somewhere you’ve probably never been without a map or GPS device.
A marketing plan is commonly accepted as standard fare, but still,few businesses operate from any semblance of one. In my experience it’s not because they don’t think they need one, it’s because they’ve either never gotten around to creating one, or worse, they’ve created a marketing plan only to check it off the list and shove it in the bottom of drawer somewhere.
I’ve worked with many small businesses, created many marketing plans, and I can tell you that a big part of the problem is the current plan mindset. Marketing plans are essential mind and stress freeing tools, and you can and should lean very heavily on yours – if you can avoid these marketing planning pitfalls.
1) It’s not about the plan
People think plan and immediately envision the document. (I’ve seen people spend more time making the cover of a marketing plan look pretty than they take to make something meaningful inside.)
It’s a lot like Lance Armstrong’s book title – It’s not about the bike. The plan is a vehicle, but it’s the planning steps, stages, meetings, questions, and inputs (training for Lance) that createmarketing plans that work.
In fact, I’ll go a step further and state that a marketing plan, like a marketing system, is just a start, it’s a systematic marketing planning approach that makes a marketing plan a living tool that can power and guide your business.
To have an effective marketing plan you must have an effective marketing planning process and that, as you’ll discover in the next set of steps, never ends
2) Deal with today’s reality
Almost every business, start-up to mature, wakes up one day and decides to create a marketing plan. What usually occurs is that they create a plan from scratch – as though nothing has occurred in the history of the business to date.
It’s as though the plan architect attempts to simply add on rooms and floors and markets and products without regard for retaining walls, foundations, – maybe even budgets. Anyone who has remodeled (an appropriate analogy I think) knows what a disaster this approach can create.
It’s okay to have a plan that’s a stretch, maybe even taking you in totally new directions, but you’ve got to deal with where you are now and plan transitions that make sense for your culture, customer, and message or you’re destined to fail.
3) Look for the right questions
Everybody wants the magic answers (I’ve written a marketing planning software tool and the #1 request is for sample plans.) The problem with someone else’s answers is they are almost undoubtedly wrong. Throw on top of it that, even if they are right today, they will be wrong tomorrow.
The systematic planning approach suggests that instead of the right answers you should be focused on finding the right questions. Answers, like a system, are rigid. Questions, or a process of using key questions to produce answers, are an approach that will yield the right answers no matter the current circumstances.
Southwest Airlines simply wanted be known as the low-cost airline – period. There’s a well worn story about how Southwest Airlines founder,Herb Kelleher, used to ask his executives when they posed some innovation whether it contributed to Southwest being the low cost carrier or not. If they could answer yes it got looked at, if no, it was scratched from consideration.
4) Simplify meaning
A marketing plan isn’t sufficient unless it starts tilting towards the 50-60 page mark, right? Actually it’s far tougher, but far more useful generally, to create one that stays in the 4-5 page range. That way you might actually do it and potential readers might actually view it.
The quicker a prospect can make an important and meaningful distinction of how your message is different, the easier everyone’s job will be. The only way to do that is to work very, very hard at creating simple, metaphor-like, messages that make it very easy for people to understand instantly what you’re about.
Tear everything in your business to shreds and find ways to tell a very simple marketing story about your products, services, people and processes. Make it so simple that anyone can tell it.
5) Monitor friction
Marketing planning and implementation is mostly about doing the things that slowly build momentum, it’s not about hitting it big next week. When you dig in and look closely at every marketing action, measure specific results of each campaign, landing page, or direct mailing, you can begin to spot the places that are causing friction and thereby slowing momentum.
If you don’t hold every initiative accountable you can’t make your plan work – it’s also a great way to waste a lot of money. Failure to monitor, analyze, and measure marketing actions is the single greatest factor holding businesses back.
If you don’t know what’s working there’s a pretty good bet you don’t know what’s not working either.
6) Take out the trash
You don’t have to do something just because it’s in the plan. I’ve seen so many businesses so tied to the plan document that they commit time and resources to things that are clearly counterproductive once released into the real market. But, hey, it’s in the plan.
Of course this goes hand in hand with point #5, you’ve got to know what is and is not productive, but once you do, you’ve also got to take the steps to cut your losses.
This one’s a bit tricky because some things don’t work as planned right away. I’ve seen an advertising program bombing until the organization started to receive some favorable press, then all of a sudden, the advertising took hold.
7) Guess again
People don’t want to admit it, certainly consultants don’t, but a marketing plan is a set of guesses, hopefully based on some knowledge, but no matter what, you need to commit to correcting the course.
I suggest that you meet at least every six weeks to renew your questions, assumptions, results, goals and objectives with an eye on using your flexibility to make real time adjustments based on real time results.
The main point is that you commit to a schedule so that your plan never has a chance to decay. There will be things that work better than expected and those that don’t, but having a group, or even all staff, check-in on the marketing twice a quarter you can keep it alive and driving while you make the adjustments to take advantage of new found opportunities.
Marketing planning can be a pretty fun team sport.
John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide.
He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting http://www.ducttapemarketing.com
You may reprint this article in its entirety if you attribute the article to John Jantsch and include the information about the author above.
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- Carolyn Higgins, President of Fortune Marketing Company specializes in helping small to medium sized businesses get the customers they need to sell more, increase profits and achieve all of their business and personal goals. We do this by implementing and managing marketing systems based on data and strategy - there is no guess work. For more information visit us at: FortuneMarketingCompany.com. We'd be glad to help!
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