The Roller Coaster Marketing Cycle

Many businesses treat marketing as a separate module, or a separate project and not part of the business organism. Here’s a scenario: business sales have been stagnant so the owner decides to implement a new marketing campaign.  He puts out some newspaper ads, starts getting active on some social networking sites, goes around town and networks with people, maybe even gives a few free seminars at the local library; a nice marketing blast.

Then the business sees a boom in sales.  Now the owner is busy working at on-site jobs, has a backlog on the bench, and does accounting work and phone calls in between.  He’s happy, has some money flowing in, he’s busy, but hasn’t been doing any seminars at the library, nobody but his clients have seen him for the last two months, and he’s all but abandoned the social network sites… just no time.   Then, after this influx of work, there’s nothing.  No new calls, the bench has a few cobwebs on it, the cash inflow stops.  He says to himself, I guess it’s a good time to clean up the shop, read a book, and oh yeah, start up another marketing campaign so I can get more business… and the cycle repeats, again and again.

Sound familiar? What’s the problem? He STOPPED MARKETING. He treated marketing as an extracurricular activity to the business, as opposed to being fully integrated with the business itself. He should have been marketing while he was busy, while he was slow, heck with social networking and the Internet, even while he was sleeping. This is not an isolated tale, this happens in the one man band shops on up to large corporations.

Maybe it’s human nature. When we lack something, we work hard to get it, then when we get it, even if we know it’s temporary, we stop trying, stop learning, stop growing, and then we end up where we started and have to go through the process again. A person is unemployed looking for a job, so she does everything possible to get noticed and land a job. Then she gets the job. The energy is put into working the job, which is good, and I’m not saying she should always be looking for a job, but she should still be growing and learning. If not, then the layoff comes and she’s back at square one trying to rebuild herself again.  Drucker called it self management. The analogy works for individuals and for businesses.

How Can I Promote My Business if I’m Too Busy?

If you are too busy to market your business, then you are simply: TOO busy.  The interesting paradox is that you can never actually be too busy to promote and market your business, even if you are a one person business.  The key is to spread a lot of “marketing seeds” all over, keep your personal brand polished, and let your customers do the marketing for you. Let me break this down:

1.  Spreading Marketing Seeds: Small inexpensive ways that you can get your brand in front of people.  They need to be inexpensive (or no cost at all) and remarkable. Find ways that you can implement something one time and then merely monitor it going forward.  It’s almost a passive marketing technique where you don’t have to spend a lot of time implementing and promoting.  This could be anything from a small ad that runs constantly to automated emails that go out to your customer base on certain days.

2.  Keeping your personal brand polished.  If you are very busy then it’s a great chance to really separate yourself from the crowd through your work.  Call your customers with updates.  Set up a virtual waiting room where they can see updates from you on how things are going. Dress appropriately if you are on-site, but create your own signature style.  Always keep in mind the touch-points that you are interacting with while you are on the job: this is marketing.

3.  Let your customers do your marketing.  The first two points usually lead to this one, but there are many ways to getting good word-of-mouth marketing.  Providing great value is obviously one.  Cultivating a community of your customers, nourishing them with even more value for their dollar, and encouraging them to spread the word are also ways to gain word-of-mouth activity.

The micro-brand

I’d like to touch a bit more on the personal brand, because it is an often overlooked and an extremely important part of marketing your business holistically.  The personal brand is key in marketing yourself all the time. Jeremy Epstein is marketing consultant that I have worked with who runs a business called “never stop marketing,” which is also his mantra.  He was formerly employed by Microsoft and has many clients from small to large businesses. He calls self-management and the process of building up the individual “the micro-brand.” The micro-brand is you, the business owner, the technician.  As I’ve mentioned before (in this article), the business owner’s self-brand is not as separated from their business as they may think.  Cut off a driver in your business-wrapped decal car and your micro-brand takes a hit.  You may manage your business well, but if you can’t interact socially in a professional manner, the micro-brand takes a hit.  A poor micro-brand will make any venture that you are a part of more difficult.  A solid micro-brand, however, is an amazing way to market yourself and your business all the time.

Example 1: I gained one of my best SOHO clients when having dinner out with my family.  My two-year old daughter, my wife, and I were out having dinner a two couples sat at the table next to us.  My daughter, being the cute outgoing girl she is, was smiling and baby-talking directly at the other table, which broke the ice for us, leading to a conversion about their grandchild that’s my daughter’s age and they would be great together, to me giving them a business card and jokingly telling them “since they already have my daughter getting married, I will need to start now to pay for the wedding.”  They laughed, but when they saw I run a computer business they were ecstatic because they run a business out of a home office and were in desperate need of computer services.  A combination of my cute daughter (and vice president of sales) , my wit, and the appearance of a well-natured family brought in one of my best small business customers. +1 for the personal brand.

Example 2: I have developed a personal style of wearing a sport coat or a suit 75% of the time.  I do not need to wear a sport coat or suit that often, I just like to and I like how they look.  Recently I picked up a PC from a customer’s house wearing a sport coat, dress shirt, and nice pair of pants.  I know I am writing to a tech crowd and this is not typical dress code for a PC repair guy, however, that’s exactly why I wear it. Word got back to me that I received “rave reviews” from my outfit and they were very impressed when I picked up their computer (friend of a friend). I don’t think many techs get noted for their fashion and appearance, making this quite remarkable, so I chalk it up as +2 for the personal brand. People notice, and it directly effects your business.

Whether you are a sole proprietor or have many employees working for you, you must continue to market your business 100% of the time.  Anything less and you will be at a disadvantage, always scrambling to get work when the lull hits, and constantly starting form scratch.  My friend Jeremy keeps it simple: Never Stop Marketing.  He believes it so much that he named his business that same motto. It’s a resounding truth that seems so obvious, yet few businesses actually implement.  Remember this simple mantra and put it into action; your business will have a definite advantage.