Tweet

How Much Time Should You Spend Marketing Your Small Business?

Guest post by: Jessica Swanson

Article Overview: Recognize the importance of learning how much time you must spend marketing your small business.

How Much Time Should You Spend Marketing Your Small Business?

How much time should you spend marketing your small business? In my humble opinion, this is one of the most important questions to consider when it comes to running a small business. But, here’s the crazy part. I attempted to pull together some quality research about this question and couldn’t come up with any solid data. Hard as I tried, I just couldn’t find a definitive answer.

So, all I can do is offer my own answer (which is backed by personal experience as opposed to research).

So here goes: You should spend at least 60% of your work-time marketing your small business.

I know, I know, it’s all a bit suspect. I teach marketing, so of course I would recommend spending an inordinate amount of time marketing your small business.

But, if you can cast your skepticism aside for a moment I have another important question for you to consider: Have you invented a product or service that can sell itself?

If you have, I offer you my heartfelt congratulations. But, most of us don’t have that luxury.

Unfortunately, there are hundreds and thousands of truly excellent products or services that haven’t made a dime in sales. I’m sure you may even know a few examples.

And, the only reason why an excellent product or service isn’t making sales is because the small business owner isn’t spending their time marketing the product. Instead, they’re spending most of their time working “in” their business.

Here’s my simple 3-step process for running a successful small business:

1. To run a profitable small business, you need to make sales.

2. To make sales, you need to get the word out about your products or services.

3. To get the word out about your product or service, you need to market.

That means, like or not, you are a marketer first, small business owner second.

And, if you’re on a shoestring budget, you certainly don’t have a lot of money to spend on marketing, so you’re going to have to put a lot of time into your marketing. There’s really no way around it.

So, how did I come up with the fact that you should spend 60% of your time on marketing? Because that’s how much time I personally spend on my own marketing activities including: posting on my blog, social networking, publishing articles, creating videos, hosting webinars, speaking, SEO and networking (just to name a few).

Here’s a quick survey to find out how much time you spend marketing your own small business.

Go to shoestringmarketing.wufoo.com/forms/how-much-time-do-you-spend-on-marketing/ to tell us how much time YOU spend marketing your small business.

Go to shoestringmarketing.wufoo.com/reports/how-much-time-do-you-spend-marketing/ to find out how much time OTHER small business owners spend marketing their small businesses:

Let me know your thoughts!

Related Articles
  A few of THE biggest mistakes made by new businesses
  How To Set Up Your Budget for Marketing
  What I Know for Sure About Marketing
  Even If Your Marketing Budget Is Limited You Can Still Get Great Results
  Time Management Strategy - Stop, Take A Step Back & Reevaluate
  Setting the Right Marketing Budget for Your Company
  Squeeze Maximum Results from Your Marketing Budget
  Small business success
  Amazing Small Home Business Ideas
  Getting Business Online
  Setting a Marketing Budget
  Marketing Secrets for Small Business Owners
  Seeking Help
  Marketing on a Shoestring
  3 Easy Ways To Do Affiliate Marketing On The Internet For Less Money
  Top Tip On How You Generate Leads For Your Network Marketing Business
  What are you really good at?
  Marketing On YouTube In Just 60 Minutes a Week
  Top 7 reasons to hire a small business marketing consultant
  Remember to Control Your Finances in Your Home Based Business

Article Tags: article marketing, Jessica Swanson, shoestring marketing, small business marketing



Related Forum Posts
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
New Small Business Topic - Hello everyone, I'm on the lookout for new topics to add to my site. We just launched a Franchising section and are planning Human Resources section. Do you have any thoughts for a new section? Here's a list of what we currently have: Angel Investors Branding Bank Loans Business Coaching Business Plan Franchises (New) Insurance Legal Marketing Public Relations Sales Small Biz Loans Venture Capital
These maybe the coldest franchises out there: - Here are the worst 15 performing franchises in regards to having the highest Small Business Administration (SBA) loan failure rates. The list is dotted with sub sandwich shops, fitness centers and car shops. WORST FRANCHISE LOAN FAILURES Failure % 1 OBEE'S SOUP SALAD SUBS 55.56% 2 LADY OF AMERICA 41.94% 3 COUNTRY CLUTTER (BED & BREAKFAST) 41.18% 4 COPY CLUB 36.36% 5 ALL TUNE AND LUBE 35.71% 6 PICKERMAN'S 35.71% 7 PHILLY CONNECTION 35.59% 8 ROLY POLY ROLLED SANDWICHES 34.78% 9 COTTMAN TRANSMISSION 34.48% 10 HAIR COLOR EXPRESS 33.33% 11 LEE MYLES AUTOMOTIVE TRANSMISSIONS 33.33% 12 GODFATHER'S PIZZA 33.33% 13 SMOOTHIE FACTORY 33.33% 14 BLIMPIE 31.39% 15 GOLF U.S.A. (RETAIL GOLF EQUIP.) 30.77% Source: Small Business Administration, SBA Loan Performance Within Franchise Code for the Period of FY 2001 - 2005
Exclusive: Interview with Results - Hi Forum Members, I'm helping start up a Business Coaching and Consulting company here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (a Subsidiary of RSC Business in Los Angeles). As a Research and Development Intern I am required to practice my listening and interview skills by surveying Small and Medium Businesses on thier Business. This Survey is designed by RSC Business to also assist the Business being interviewed more insight into their own business. I am looking to interview about 30 businesses across North America over the span of 3 months. At the end of these interviews I will be publishing a report of the results and they will be made available for free to the Interviewees. The Report data will include responses from a minimum of 100 interviews. I would like to extend this opportunity to members of the Forum. If you would like to have this short 20-30 minute interview conducted on your Business and you reside in North America please send me an email or PM. Please contact me at andy[at]jvprosperity[dot]com to arrange our interview and to get free access to the results when they are published.
Re: Biz Plan Competition - i just wanted to say that posting Small Business Events on CanadaOne is a great resource. Thanks Julie!


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Intro to Search Engine Optimization

Creating a Better Place to Work

Understanding Influence

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.