For your business to survive, you must manage time effectively to consistently advertise your business to generate sustaining profit.
Use marketing to convince your target audience of your products and services, developing advertising strategies that leads to the path of least resistance to close a sale.
Overwhelmed by the day-to-day tasks of running a business, entrepreneurs frequently put marketing at the tail end of their To-Do List. A.K.A. Multiplicity of Stuff Syndrome, this will stifle your growth and success.
Manage Your Time for Better Marketing and Sales using These 5 Strategies:
1. Clearly define your target market. Identify your ideal client, what he or she looks like and acts like. Write down their description in full detail. This is time well spent because it will simplify your marketing efforts.
2. The sales funnel is a great tool in effectively using your marketing time. Comparing the sales process to a funnel, a prospect starts at the top of the funnel (the widest part) and then works through a system to reach the narrow part where they become a customer. By using the sales funnel, you can gauge your marketing activities and quantify your prospects at each stage of the process. Create your sales funnel and define the activities needed to keep it full.
3. Using the law of accumulation, tiny efforts start slow but compound to growth and momentum.
Block 15 minutes a day to do something that keeps your sales funnel full. Just 15 minutes for five days a week equals one hour and fifteen minutes of marketing time. That’s five hours a month devoted strictly to marketing your business. Doing a little bit everyday will produce great results. Consistently do those activities to keep adding to your sales funnel.
4. Another way to keep your funnel full is to devote time to follow up. We often forget about the follow up… make it part of your sales funnel activities. Decide how much of your business schedule you will devote to follow up marketing.
5. Focus on the 20% of your activities that brings the greatest results. Consistent action will show you patterns. Some of your activities will produce better results with less effort. Set aside 30 minutes each week to review your marketing efforts. This small step will speed prospects through your sales funnel.
NOTE: Marketing is not advertising. Although your marketing plan will include some advertising, marketing is learning your client’s wants and giving it to them, as long as their wants doesn’t fall into the realm of illegal, immoral, or fattening!
Your marketing reviews should consist of tracking, testing, and reviewing what works best for your business.
Let’s imaging that you spent 30 minutes a week on one activity and 30 minutes on something else, then you tracked your results. Say, you discover one of these produces 20% more sales, which should you devote your marketing time to?
It’s important to your business success not to let the “busyness” take over and squeeze out time for marketing. Each week devote time to keeping your sales funnel full and improve your sales by focusing on your top marketing activities.
Tags: Business, home based business, Internet Marketing, marketing, online business, self improvement, Small business, Time management