How Much Time Should You Spend on Marketing?

I’m often asked how much time my clients should spend on their marketing and it’s like the how long is a piece of string question! Ultimately, there’s no right or wrong answer but the more time you commit to marketing your business (assuming you are working on the right things) the quicker it 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 such as chatting about what you do to friends and family. 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 working as a practitioner, I could spend up to 20 hours a week on different marketing activities (I’ve always loved my marketing). 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 made it efficient, 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.

Always Ask Why?

Whilst you should always strive to be visible and get yourself out there. Make sure you do it strategically and not as a knee-jerk reaction to something you’ve seen someone else do. Any marketing you do should always have a reason and should point the recipient toward their next step. Before you do the next marketing activity, simply check in and ask yourself why:

• Why am I doing this?
• Does it help me achieve my goals?
• Is this what I really want to spend my time doing?
• Does it make my clients happy?
• Will it attract clients to my business?

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, more efficient (and even fun) 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 (so you won’t connect with the right people) and you’re likely to stop anyway.

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 time 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, spend the time you’re planning to see clients but don’t have any appointments 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 keep 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 focusing the 20% of your marketing that’s working, you’ll save yourself a huge amount of time.

Without marketing and attracting clients to your business, you will be the world’s best-kept secret! All your training and hard work will all have been for nothing and those who need your help will miss out. Love it, or hate it, you need to embrace marketing and do this by creating your own marketing 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 and feeling bad about 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.