The primary deterrent from marketing is often a lack of time. But, you can market your practice without disrupting your business by following some simple suggestions to improve your reach and keep in better contact with your clients and leads.
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If you read my first article in this series,
Marketing On a Time Budget Part 1: Five Steps for Foolproof Planning, you should now have a goal and a plan. But do you know how you’re going to execute it? Sometimes the biggest barrier to overcome is our misconception that there isn’t any time to implement the plan you’ve just put together. It’s easy to feel busy, yet not feel very productive.
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These steps can help you improve your productivity and efficiency in order to better organize your day. You may find you have additional time to focus on your marketing efforts that have been pushed to the back of the line!
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Achieving a big goal can be difficult. Especially if it’s the first time you’re going after it. Many people end up abandoning the goals they laid out because they can’t keep up the momentum. A broad goal such as re-engaging with clients can seem daunting and hard to measure. “Re-engage” could be broken up into calling five customers per week to ask if they have needs you can help with or sending a monthly email with an informative article.
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All you have to do is break down your big goal into small, achievable tasks. When you create these smaller tasks to reach your ultimate goal, you can focus on going step by step. You also have the opportunity to see which of these smaller tasks could be delegated to an employee or outside service.
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We all need a system of connecting with our goals or else they won’t stay a priority. So, each week, and each day if possible, reconnect to your goals. By writing my goals daily on my agenda, it forces me to ask myself, “How are my priorities and actions today going to move me closer to my goals?” This literally
only takes a minute or two each day and ensures I’m staying on track. I personally use the
Best Self journal and it works great for my needs.
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It’s important not to forget about these goals and that’s why I recommend writing them down. How many of you have a picture of artwork up in your office? And when is the last time you can remember looking at it? I certainly can’t remember the last time I looked at mine. That’s because once it is there for a while, your brain will ignore it. This is why putting them on the wall or reviewing them only once a week isn’t as effective.
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Time management is what you do when you prioritize your agenda for the day. The way you schedule your day is key to maximizing your productivity.
If you aren’t scheduling your day, you are probably being pushed along by urgent matters that pop up rather than intentionally working on certain goals. My productivity increased dramatically by doing a daily agenda. The key is to just START and then continue doing a schedule each day until it becomes habit.
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Be realistic about how you structure your time and your day. The time of day that you schedule tasks can also make or break your plan. You probably have a certain time of day that you are more energized and can be more productive. The early hours of the morning are my prime time for doing creative work so I don’t schedule client calls for that time of day and tackle creative projects first. Pay attention to what times of day you are most productive and if you have prime times for certain types of work. Doing a daily agenda helped me to identify the patterns of what made for the most productive day for me.
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This is an essential skill for maximizing the few minutes you have allocated to marketing your company.
Minimize distractions as much as you can. According to University of Irvine study, it takes people and average of 23 minutes to get back on task after getting distracted. So, what we think will be a quick reply to an email can snowball into more and before we know it, we have spent all our allocated time.
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What is the main marketing task you have been avoiding and know you need to do? Starting an article can be the hardest part for me. Once I get going, the creative juices start flowing. Scheduling this task early in the day and just starting by writing down a rough title and outline gets me over the initial hump and the frog is eaten! Knowing that you have to do something that you really don’t want to do can be an incredible motivation killer. No good comes from trying to work all day, knowing full well that you still have to do the thing you’re avoiding.
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Have questions about any how to maximize your productivity? Reach out to me to discuss your marketing options.
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