How Much Time Do We Need to Spend on Marketing?

Sales and Marketing can be a tedious task to some business owners who would rather be engineering their products or delivering the services they offer. But sales and marketing is an essential task that can help catapult business owner to success (you must have a valuable product or service in order for any marketing efforts to materialize so lets assume you have some star products and services!).

How much time do we have to put into marketing ourselves?

Here are several ways to determine how much time should be alloted to marketing:

% of Your Time:

• For business owners that have constant business flowing in you may be able to spend only 10-25% of your time marketing your business.
• For new business owners you may need to spend 50-75% of your time marketing.

It is suggested that you track your time (pull out that egg timer, or you can use your iPhone..) so you actually put in the time instead of wondering off to your other business tasks that you may like a lot better! Some suggest that we do the tasks we least like at the beginning of our day - so if you dislike marketing tackle it early on in your day and check it off the to-do list!

Track what is needed with a Sales Pipe Line:

• Draw out a sales pipe line (see reference below for more info), ensure that there is activity in each section of the pipeline, if you are closing all your deals and you have nothing in at the top or "the universe" that you can pull down into your pipeline you may need to commit more time to marketing. It's all about the constant flow of possible business that turns into actual business - keep on pouring (marketing) business into that pipeline.

Compare yourself to your Competition:

• If you are a business owner you are a driven person. If you want to stand out against other companies you will have to put in MORE time marketing your business than your fiercest competition is. Write down how much time you think your main competition is spending on marketing, then double that number (you do want to be doubly as successful than your competition don't you?!) and get marketing.

We need to remind ourselves that it's all a numbers game, the more people you call and connect with the more opportunity for business. So market everyday for a few hours, fill that pipeline, and strive to put more time and effort in that your competition. Market on!

SBK (Shannon) contact me: sbkelsick@gmail.com

Photo by Scott Prince www.inthepitchblack.com

References:

http://thewealthyfreelancer.com/2009/10/how-much-time-should-you-spend-marketing-your-freelance-business/

https://mybrc.com.au/Attracting-Business/Buy-Sell/Successful-Selling/Pages/What_Is_Sales_Pipeline.aspx

http://ezinearticles.com/?101-Marketing-Strategies---How-Much-Time-You-Spend-on-the-Three-Primary-Areas-of-Your-Business&id=3489768