Too Busy to Market

One of the ever-present problems for smaller companies is capacity. When times are good and the company is busy it is “all hands on deck!” to get the work done. When times are slower, there is more time to work on “less urgent” things… like marketing. When the company is busy and time to market is short, sales and communications activities are often set aside. Whether an email newsletter, a press release, a website content update, or follow-up sales calls, the urgent (getting the work on the plate done) is prioritized over marketing.

It is an old adage that you need to be marketing and selling all the time, you can’t wait for sales to slow down. That’s true, but easier said than done. Large organizations have dedicated staff and external resources who are consistently marketing the company, brand, and offerings. For smaller companies, that is difficult when marketing resources are in short supply. If you are reading this as a small to medium size business owner, you probably have been on the resulting roller coaster of sales…. more sales and marketing effort leads to more sales (up goes the coaster) and then less marketing effort (when the company is busy) and sales start to fall off (down the hill the coaster runs). Terrifying.

I define the marketing resources as Time, Money, Expertise, and Will. All of these are necessary for any organization to be able to successfully market itself. I’ve explained the resources in more detail in a previous article. Time is a critical component. Most people ask “How much does it cost?”, but another critical question is “How much time will it take?”. This brings us back to the problem of being too busy to market and sell.

The real solution to this problem is a plan and technology. Yes, you can hire Genius Marketing to supplement your marketing resources with time and expertise. (Great idea!) That’s what we do: help organizations manage the implementation of their marketing plans. However, the real tip is to have a plan in the first place. If your organization’s marketing plan is simply reactive, “What should we advertise this week?” Then your plan is to fail. When time gets tight and no pre-work has been done, the marketing stops. That’s why most newsletters fail. The first issue is epic, the second pretty good and the third… doesn’t happen. That’s why many social media efforts failed. Without a plan, posts can be harder and harder to come by…if anyone remembers to take the time to post at all.

A good content plan (What do we want to tell our prospects and customers, and what do they need to hear?) plus a good tactical plan (What communications media/tools are we going to use to get our messages out?) is the only way to achieve the goal of consistently delivering marketing/sales no matter how busy (or not) the company becomes.

A content plan lets us pre-stock the message cabinet with what we are going to say. Nothing is worse than trying to come up with content as a deadline approaches. Having messages pre-approved makes it much easier to get the tactics out. Having a tactical plan in place lets us use technology to deliver messages on a consistent schedule.

Believe me, it works. I am working with an organization that is going through major organizational and procedural changes. All for the good. However, the marketing and sales effort continues because planning ahead means that the messages and creative were already approved and the tactics were already staged. Execution is much easier because it is only that… getting the tactics launched. If we were having to develop creative and get messages approved in the midst of the busyness… guess what? Marketing wouldn’t be happening.

If you’d like to discuss how Genius Marketing can help your organization develop the plan and processes it needs to consistently market and sell itself, please contact us. Do it before you get too busy…