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Creating Your Marketing Routine

Guest post by: Cidnee Stephen

Article Overview: Think about the last time you made a big change in the way you run your business or perhaps even in your personal life. It’s hard to adjust your day to day habits. Sometimes we are even at a loss where to start. The same tends to happen with our marketing.

Creating Your Marketing Routine

Think about the last time you made a big change in the way you run your business or perhaps even in your personal life. It’s hard to adjust your day to day habits. Sometimes we are even at a loss where to start. The same tends to happen with our marketing. Perhaps you have worked with a strategist like us to help you build the right marketing system for your business, but don’t know how to actually implement all these changes going forward. There seems to be so much ongoing content, “tweets” and updates to the website. It can all be overwhelming unless you can make certain elements part of your day to day routine. Here is a roadmap to your marketing routine:

• Make the time.Let’s face it if you had a hot prospect that was looking at spending a considerable amount of money with you, you wouldn’t ignore them to go get toner for your printer. Yet when it comes to marketing – by far our biggest prospect for earning a considerable amount of money for the company, it always remains low on the priority list. So start treating it like a hot prospect.

Action:Book a recurring appointment with your marketing in your work calendar every day for at least 30 minutes and then once or twice a week for 1.5 hours each.

• Create your tasks. I love my Tasks feature in Outlook. It allows me add a task, make it recurring and prioritize it. I can even share it or allocate it with others. You can’t just expect, after all, to sit down to do your marketing and then wonder what the heck it is you’re going to actually do.

Action:Using a task program (or a spreadsheet) start by listing what you want to accomplish this quarter. Then back this up into monthly tasks, weekly tasks and possibly even daily tasks.

• Do your tasks.Now this might seem obvious, but if you have ever created a to-do list before, you probably have found that a few of those “to-do’s” just don’t get done. There is one reason for this. Simply, you don’t want to do it right now.

No matter how you try it’s just not your forte, you don’t want to learn it, you can’t find the time or it just is against your personality. It would be like choosing swimming as part of your new fitness regime, when you can’t even swim and have no time or desire to learn. In the case of marketing then you have 3 options. If a task element is still on your list a month or two after it’s due:

Delay it– Move it to the next quarter if the reason it hasn’t been done is you have ran out time or it’s not as big of a priority as you thought.

Delegate it– If you don’t have the forte or don’t have the desire to learn it, delegate it to someone else with experience in this area to get it done for you. After all, a successful person is one who has learned to spend money to save time instead of spending time to save money!

Delete it– if this just doesn’t fit with who you are and you can’t delay it or delegate it. Delete it as part of your marketing system. Don’t be surprised when you go to actually delete it if you have a change of heart and find you can’t really let it go! This is good news because it means you have now chosen to either do it, delay it, or delegate it!

So what might a marketing routine look like? Here’s one created by one of my peers, Kelly Weppler Hernandez of WH and Associates.

Daily

• Facebook and Twitter daily update first thing in the morning, and maybe a posting later in the day

Weekly

• LinkedIn update at least once a week.
• Hand-written Notes – every Thursday. Send at least 2 handwritten notes to colleagues, past clients, strategic partners etc.
• Blogging – anything that’s related to your industry. Blogging might be written, video or audio.
• Update content on your website

Monthly

• Newsletter – email corporate newsletter at least once per month. Pick a target date like the 15th.
• Run a monthly promotional campaign

Quarterly

• Speaking Event – set a goal to do a speaking event once per quarter.

Annually

• Client Appreciation Event – pick a month that works within your calendar and work with a few strategic partners to host a client appreciation event.

Remember the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Create your own marketing routine and make appointments and tasks in your calendar to get it done!

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Article Tags: cidnee stephen, habit, marketing, routine, small business, strategy



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