This is one of those million dollar question that I get asked a lot! So I thought I’d dedicate a post to working this through with you.

Marketing is one of those things that you have to do to make sure your business gets seen by your potential customers.

After all, you could have the best product or service in the world, but if no-one knows about it, you’re not going to sell anything, your business won’t survive and you’ll end up living in a cardboard box!

That might be taking it a bit far, but you know what I mean.

So, knowing that marketing is a vital life force for the success of your business, we know it’s a job that has to be done.

We’re not going to be talking about the how here, that’s covered in other posts. We’re going to be talking about the time it takes.

The first thing you want to get to grips with is where you need to be marketing. If you are trying to be on every single channel, unless you absolutely love marketing, you’re going to wear yourself out and not be your best shiny self on any of them.

Know where your customers are.

Don’t waste your time putting all your marketing eggs in a basket if your customers aren’t there.

Get to know your customers and where they are.

You can do this by knowing your ideal customer and also getting to grips with google analytics so you can know which marketing channels are driving the most traffic to your website.

Maybe you know that referral (links from other websites) give you a lot of valuable website traffic, so you would want to spend some time creating more of those.

And you know that although you get less Instagram hits to your website, those that do come spend up to 6 minutes on your site, meaning they are more likely to know, like and trust you and therefore more likely to turn into customers – so spend time developing your Instagram following.

Next, you’ll want to create a strategy. Now a strategy really is something that gives you some guidance on what to post and when.

It also means that you don’t have to use up all your brain power wondering what to post this week.

So, thinking about Facebook as an example.

Maybe you’ve committed to posting 3 times a week and you know from looking at your insights that Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday are your best days for traffic to your page.

Your strategy could look something like this:

Tuesday – Facebook live giving value and advice

Thursday – Weekly blog content

Sunday – insight into my life

Once you’ve decided what content goes where your life will feel calmer and easier! You can do the same for each of your social media channels.

Have a look at your favourite magazine next time you buy it and compare it to the issue before.

The editors have slots to fill, and these slots of the same every month. They’re not coming up with new sections each month, they know what they are and they are simply filling them.

So there will be a contents page, a new products page, and indepth interview page, a cooking page and so on.

There is consistency, planning and strategy – creating that will save you oodles of time.

My next question would be how much time do you have to dedicate to creating content?

Do you have time to create a blog post once a month, or are you happy vlogging and talking to camera? You’re going to need to create some original content to position yourself as the expert in your field. Take a look at your diary and see if you can carve out some time each week for this. 

Or perhaps Pr is a good driver for you, how much time do you have to respond to journalist requests or look for newsworthy topics you could add your voice to?

It could be an hour a day, or half a day a week. When are you at your creative best, morning or afternoons. Try and build a structure that fits you.

Then you need to create time for social media. Posting, responding and engaging.

Now here’s the trick.

If you’ve got tons of work and things are going nicely for you and your business, then you probably only need a light touch to keep your business going.

But if you really need more work, more purchases or more clients then you might need to start being more visible and that means spending more time creating content and being on-line.

The golden ticket is when you have a sale funnel set up, it’s all automated, you have a content creation schedule and you know when you’re posting on social media.

That’s at the point all businesses need to get to. So, it’s all just happening, smoothly, easily and without too much effort on your part.

But I know it’s not always like that at the beginning!

So back to the original question.

How long do I need to spend marketing my business?

If you have regular clients then an hour a day.

If you’re in need of customers, then I’d be spending anytime I’m not with clients working on my marketing. And I don’t mean until 9pm at night! But if you want to work 5 hours a day and you’re seeing a client for 2 of those hours, or in the workshop for 4 hours, then I’d recommended working on your marketing the rest of that time.

Putting the hours in now will mean being able to relax further down the line!

Strategically!

Fancy talking this through with an expert? Oh, that’s me! I work with people just like you all the time on their business, so they’re able to create a sustainable enjoyable business.

I work with people who have just the seed of an idea and no website, to people who have been in the business for 5 years and want to stretch past the 6 figure salary.

Why not book a discovery call and see how we can work together?