You have about 4 hours of concentration per day, split into two 2-hour chunks. How are you using your 4 hours?
Since starting my solo consultancy, I’ve spent 2 hours each morning marketing my work. I find that these are both my most productive and my happiest working hours each day. By deliberately scheduling time where I focus on important, long-term marketing goals, I’ve improved dramatically in a short time.
The Internet is one of the greatest tools ever invented for both improving and destroying productivity.
In this time, I close out of my email program, and stay away from Facebook, news sites, and everything else not directly related to what I’m working on. Nothing is going on in those channels that is more important than what I’m working on. (Obviously I make an exception when I’m using email or social media for strategic marketing.)
If you’re short on self-control, you can unplug from the Internet entirely, or use something like StayFocusd, whose “Nuclear Option” will block your time-sinks entirely for a certain duration. If you’re on a Mac, Anti-Social does the same for all browsers.
Urgent versus important tasks
If you’re chronically stressed and up late working, you’re doing something wrong.
— Cal Newport of Georgetown University
To be successful doing this, you need to be able to differentiate urgent tasks from important goals. Building relationships with potential buyers and creating a strong reputation among my peers is of high importance to me; tasks relating to those goals are worth my 2 hours of focus. However, emails from non-clients requesting my intervention are not.
Likewise, a ringing phone is urgent, but not important. (Thanks to Stephen Covey for that example.)
It sounds hokey, but I’m a believer in Alan Weiss’s “One Percent Solution”—the idea that if you aim to improve your business by 1% each day, in a couple months, you’ll be twice as good as you are now. I try to use my 2 hours each day to make my business 1% better. (And in many cases, I think my morning is worth much more than that—sometimes I estimate I improve my marketing by 5%!)
You’ve allocated your time. Now what?
Hopefully I’ve convinced you to set aside your 2 hours each day. Let’s talk now about specific strategies you can employ for marketing your business.
Fundamentally, I believe your marketing goals should be to
- Build relationships with prospects, and
- Build a reputation among your peers.
To that end, there are a few strategies I favor. In order, these are
- Blogging about topics important to my audience,
- Using case studies and testimonials to overcome objections from prospects,
- Building a following on social media,
- Connecting with prospects on the Web, and
- Using email for low-touch trust-building with prospects.
Why your blog is the most important marketing tool your business has
If you’re a small business, having a company blog is an absolute must. This is where you can establish yourself as a though leader in your industry. Talking about the things your peers and your clients are interested in—with a perspective that they value and (importantly) haven’t heard before—will build your brand, your following, and your prospect list.
Another important benefit of blogging is having your business’s Web site turn up more often in search results. “Content is king” among the search engines for good reason.
For instance, imagine you’re a widget manufacturer and someone is searching for the most important features to look for in a widget. Your Web site should be ready and waiting to help them—you might have a blog post titled “3 Essential Features For a New Widget.” When this appears in the search results, you can be sure you’re connecting with customers. Doing so will establish serious trust with the people you provide this value to. You can’t beat that.
Writing case studies and testimonials
So-called “social proof”—using endorsements from others to assuage the fears of your prospects—is one of the most important pieces of your marketing toolkit. The odds are good that your products are being used by people with high authority in your field. By writing a public case study on how this person has benefitted, you’ll be both highlighting particular features of your product and showing how the product as a whole is worth its asking price.
When writing a case study, I try to always make 3 things clear:
- What was the customer’s need? (Previously they may have limped along without knowing they had a need!)
- What did you provide?
- How did the client’s situation change?
Any part of the narrative you provide beyond those essentials is great, but make sure those are the first bits of the story your readers find.
When it comes to testimonials, you don’t need anywhere near as formal a process of solicitation and write-up. If you’re selling a product, I suggest simply using excerpts of reviews (with an appropriate citation).
These go a long way when featured prominently on your Web site and other marketing materials—they probably have a higher value per word than anything you could write!
Using social media, without being used by it
Despite what the “experts” say, social media is not a panacea. Capitalizing on it is hard, and it probably won’t make or break your business. (That’s a good thing. You never want to be dependent on a service that someone else could intentionally break at any time.) With that said, it can still be seriously valuable in the right hands.
Your goal with your social media presence (like your goal for your blog and just about every other marketing effort) should be to build relationships with prospects and build a reputation among your peers. You should be providing value to your social media “followers,” in the form of interesting or useful links, whether written by you or others. This isn’t hard—when you come across an article useful to you, share it. When you author a blog post, share it.
Getting clicks, shares, and followers on social media is no different from any other micro-conversion. You need to sell it! Encourage people to follow you by telling them about the great stuff you share there. Get interaction from your followers with calls-to-action like “What do you think? Have you found <the topic of the link you’re sharing> useful?”
Like with your blog, you shouldn’t be trying (directly) to sell to your social media followers. By providing value to them, you’ll be building your brand and keeping your company on people’s minds. When they need your products or services, they’ll come to you.
Find “your people” and connect with them
The chances are very good that your ideal prospects already have a community online where they chat about your industry, share interesting news, and troubleshoot one another’s problems. This can come in many shapes, including dedicated forums, blogs, and chat rooms.
You can get (and give) tremendous value by joining these communities. Simply by being helpful or sharing your ideas, you can build a reputation for yourself and your company. There’s no need to push your company, though you should recommend your products when it makes sense to do so—when someone is expressing a particular need that you have solved. Instead, just focus on being a part of the community. Over time, people will come to associate your screen name with the smart, helpful person at the other end of the keyboard and, in turn, with your company.
This is a slow enough process that, depending on your industry, it might not make sense to include it in your 2 hours per day. If that’s the case, you may want to instead hire someone part-time for $10/hour to be the face of your company in these communities. The value will probably be about the same as if you had posted yourself, while allowing you to focus your time elsewhere. (In this case, finding and hiring someone to do this is worth your 2 hours!)
Build trust through low-touch emails
I’ve talked a lot about why you need to use lifecycle emails in your business. The opportunity to build trust with customers and educate them about your industry (and making sure they aren’t instead educated by your competitors) can’t be over-valued.
Sending an automated series of emails is a very low-touch way to connect with your prospects—it requires very little intervention on your part. At the same time, you can make it clear in the emails that you’d love to talk to your readers if they have any questions—thereby offering them the opportunity to switch to a high-touch conversation when they are most qualified to become customers.
I suggest that creating a lifecycle email campaign is an important strategic goal that is worth your 2 hours per day. Individual conversations with prospects may or may not be—you may want to schedule these for later in the day, as they likely don’t require the height of your focus. (Most customer support people find that 80% of the cases they handle are variations of a small handful of questions.)
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More resources
- “Running A Software Business On 5 Hours A Week” from Patrick McKenzie of Kalzumeus. The number one takeaway is to build what Patrick calls “time assets”—acquiring tools or starting processes that will save you time in the future. Hiring someone to represent your business in interacting with your community is one such example. (While it says “software” in the title, this advice is applicable to every business I can think of!)
- “How to Use Blogging to Market Your Freelance Business” from the Freelance Switch blog. Takeaways are to write for your niche and have a strategy for getting ideas for posts. (Again, this is aimed at freelancers, but it’s applicable to any small-to-medium business.)
- “If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong: The Surprisingly Relaxed Lives of Elite Achievers” from Cal Newport of Georgetown University. Newport found that among the most successful violin players, just 4 hours a day of practice is the norm. The takeaway, in his words is this: “Do less. But do what you do with complete and hard focus. Then when you’re done be done, and go enjoy the rest of the day.”
- “If You Aren’t Building Trust First, Your Marketing is Wrong” here on the Conversion Insights blog. This post explains why you should focus the early stages of your purchasing funnel on creating a trusting relationship with your prospects. “Build trust first, then sell later.”
- “Set Up Your First Lifecycle Email Campaign” here on the Conversion Insights blog. If you aren’t yet using lifecycle emails to educate customers and build trust with them, this should be high on your to-do list.