Why Marketing is Essential to Grow Your Business
December 2, 2009 by admin
Filed under Marketing & Promotion
There are a lot of things in our day that demand our time and attention. Some help move our business forward and some have us ending our day wondering what we have accomplished.
We have a tendency to let ourselves get distracted by the things that are screaming the loudest for our attention, and we also have a tendency to spend time on things we enjoy the most, regardless of whether it is a money making activity or not. And unfortunately, many times it is not.
For most of us, marketing is an essential activity for our business. We must market ourselves and our services to our target audience so they become aware of us and are interested to learn more. With today’s competitive economy, the idea of hanging out our shingle and hoping people will find us will lead to a definite doom.
Therefore, if you are truly committed to having a successful business, and your business is not yet where you want it to be, then you will need to be spending the majority of your time on marketing activities. And the majority of that time should be spent on income generating marketing activities.
There are two types of marketing activities – active and passive.
Active marketing activities give you the greatest exposure, establish connection and creditability, and get you greater results quicker.
- Speaking
- Training events like workshops and teleseminars
- Networking – at meetings, organizations and such
- Social networking with purpose
- Creating joint venture and alliance partnerships
Passive activities are activities you need to be performing in your business but aren’t as direct in generating income but very effective just the same for generating awareness, growing your list and creating interest.
- Article marketing
- Blogging
- Maintaining Your website
- Working on your brochure
- Keep in touch activities – like sending cards, notes and newsletters
If you are committed to growing a successful business, then until you have reached the level of success you desire, you will want to be working full time in your business. Therefore, if you only have 3 clients, then the rest of your work week would be spent mostly on marketing activities.
For those of you who have a job that you want to leave and are really committed to building your own business, then I encourage you to put your head down, make the short term sacrifice and squeeze as many hours out of your day as you can marketing your business.
It is only temporary and the faster you get your business grown the sooner you can leave your job.
If your business is where you want it to be and you have a steady stream of referrals and people contacting you, then you may be able to reduce your marketing activities, but you do not want to ever completely let up on the marketing pedal because clients will come and go.
In sales, it’s called the pipeline. You want to always be putting names in your pipeline, and nurturing those relationships so that you always have a steady stream of clients coming in while others leave.
If marketing is a necessity for companies like Weight Watchers and McDonalds, then marketing will most likely be a necessity for us too. Therefore, it is advantageous for us to spend our time on activities that will move our business forward – and marketing is indeed one of them.
This post was graciously submitted by:
Kim Clausen
Ready2Go Marketing Solutions, Inc.
