Podcast 22: How Much Time Should you Spend Marketing Your Holistic Business?
Jul 16, 2020
To ensure you thrive as a practitioner, you must learn to market yourself. If you have no clients, your training and hard work will all have been for nothing. In today’s noisy world, it’s even more important that you’re visible and let people know how you can help them. This is where your marketing comes in and love it, or hate it, you need to embrace it to thrive.
How much time should you spend on marketing?
Ultimately there is no right or wrong answer but the more time you commit to marketing your practice (assuming you are working on the right things) the quicker your business will grow.
How much time each week do you currently spend on marketing? 2-hours? 5-hours? 10-hours? I’d estimate you’ll need to spend at least 10-hours a week, especially if you’re just starting out. Does this number scare you?
If it does, relax. You’ll be surprised how much you already do but didn’t realise it comes under the marketing banner. By making marketing fun and part of your routine, it’ll be much easier for you to market yourself and find clients.
When I first started marketing the practice I work in, I spent around 20-hours a week on different activities. Once I’d established a routine, it dropped to about 6-hours and some weeks as few as 2-hours. Knowing what works and having systems in place makes it efficient now, but I had to put in the legwork.
There’s no ‘one-size fits all’ with your marketing. The important thing is to work out what works for you and create your own marketing recipe, one you can repeat over, and over again. This will help you make the most of your precious time and your marketing efforts.
What’s your goal for your marketing?
Any marketing you do should always have a reason and should point the recipient towards their next step. Before you do the next marketing activity, simply check-in and ask yourself why you’re doing it. This article explains why it’s important to ask yourself why before doing any marketing activity.
Work to your strengths
Just because your peers are marketing themselves in a certain way, it doesn’t mean it’s right for you. The more you focus on marketing yourself in a way that works to your strengths, the easier (and more efficient) it will be.
I give you permission to stop doing the things you really struggle with. There’s a huge difference between doing things that stretch you and having to force yourself to do things you hate or find really difficult. Ultimately, these are the things where you won’t show up at your best and you’re likely to stop.
Recognise your communication strengths and pick marketing activities that reflect them:
- Writing: press articles, blogs, guest blogging, social media posts, email marketing, newsletters or books
- Talking: being interviewed, speaking opportunities, podcasting and videos
- Visual: create infographics, animated videos, social media posts, photographs
- Personal connection: networking, talks and workshops, conferences and stands at events
Make time for marketing
Ensure you have time to spend on your marketing by booking sessions in your diary. If you don’t set yourself a routine, it’s far too easy to find other things to do and leave the marketing for another time – which ultimately will never happen!
When you’re starting out, spend the time you’re planning to see clients but have no bookings on your marketing. For example, if your goal is to see 10 clients a week for an hour each, and you only have 3 booked in, invest the other 7-hours on your marketing in addition to your scheduled marketing time.
Start where you are
Keep your marketing as simple as possible and start with what you already have available. There’s no point investing in fancy marketing software and courses if you’re not making the most of what you already have.
Do an audit of your current marketing and work out if you’re not making the most of what you have. What else could you be doing with these that also works to your strengths?
Stick to a few core activities and get good at those before adding any more into the mix. Whatever you do, don’t try and do everything at once or you’ll find yourself dabbling here and there and doing nothing well.
Identify what’s working
The more time you focus on doing the things that work, the more likely you are to get better results. Every time you have a conversation with a new client, find out how they heard about you. This will start to give you an idea of what’s attracting clients to your door. How are you maintaining the relationships you have with your existing clients that keeps them returning? Do more of those things.
Have you heard of the Pareto effect or the 80/20 rule? Basically, 20% of your efforts will provide 80% of your results. By identifying and focussing the 20% of your marketing that’s working, you’ll save yourself a huge amount of time.
Ultimately, there are no hard-fast rules with marketing, you have to create your own recipe. One that you’ve tried and tested, and you know works for you. Trying to do what other practitioners do is a sure-fire way of going around in circles with your marketing. So start working to your strengths and save yourself time in the process.
If you struggle to work out what marketing is best for you, book a free discovery call today and find out how I can help you.
Podcast 22 show notes:
- How much time should you spend on marketing? (01:12)
- What’s your goal for your marketing? (03:25)
- Work to your strengths (04:04)
- Make time for marketing (08:07)
- Start where you are (09:09)
- Identify what’s working (10:39)
