Okay, let’s face it. As a busy entrepreneur it’s all too easy nowadays to run around like a chicken with your head cut off trying to do everything and anything that might grow your business.
Even if you follow the advice of marketing experts you can quickly find yourself with far more to do than there are hours in the day. And that’s even not counting everything else you need to do to run your business. This leads to lots of long days and late nights chained to your desk.
Often, this happens because you haven’t taken the time to really look at what you’ve been doing, and determine which activities are truly worthwhile. I know, it’s hard to stop and do some review, but it’s really worth it.
Because the reality is, three well executed marketing tactics done on a consistent basis can get you more business than a whole bucketful done in a scattershot manner—if you focus your time and energy on the right ones.
So how do you know which ones are the “right” ones? These are the marketing tactics that clearly have excellent ROI (Return on Investment). In other words, if you spend 8 hours a week on social media, but it’s never generated a client, that’s poor ROI.
If you spend two hours a week writing and publishing an ezine that brings you 10 new clients a year, that’s better ROI.
If you go to two, 2-hour networking events each month, and you regularly pick up a client each time, that’s great ROI!
What you have to do is look at both the fixed costs to implement the tactic and the time cost (IE number of hours times your hourly rate). Then look at the results. How many leads, clients or sales does each tactic generate as well as how much revenue?
Once you know these answers you can subtract your costs from your gross revenue for each tactic to figure out which ones are really worth the time and money. Of course, you can’t tell if a tactic is really working until you give it a fair chance. So be sure to implement any tactic for at least 3-6 months to get a good gauge.
And remember, sometimes it’s not the tactic itself that’s the problem but the strategy behind it or the execution. So you may need to tweak how you’re using a tactic to improve its ROI.
Once you know what’s working best, pick your top three and focus the majority of your marketing time and energy on those. If those become a piece of cake to do, or you automate or delegate them, then add in one more. Before you know it, you’re going to be growing your small business with way less effort.
How many marketing tactics are you using currently? What are your top three? What’s your most profitable one? I’d love to know what’s working for you and your thoughts on this topic…
Thanks, Stacy! At this point in my new business I’m figuring out not only which strategies have a good to great ROI, but also which activities bring me joy in the process.
I find I truly enjoy researching information and writing,so I’d say article marketing and my blog are two of the top three. Now my challenge is getting the visibility so what I write is actually noticed and consumed by others. It is a work in progress, surely.
You’re very welcome Linda! And good for you for paying attention to both ROI and what brings you joy. It’s definitely hard to do anything consistently that doesn’t bring you joy. And I have to say that blogging and article marketing are in my top three as well. The more content you put out there the quicker you’ll get noticed.
Keep up the good work!
Stacy