That’s because it is ALWAYS marketing time.
But now, more than most times, it is time to market.
To get the word out about your company, your products, your services.
Let’s have, what in the world of diplomacy, is called a “frank discussion.”
WHAT’S YOUR SITUATION?
There are a few possible situations your business could find itself in right at this moment:
- You could be doing just GREAT. Rolling in the dough. More business than you can handle.
- Your company could be at death’s door. Serious contemplation of shutting the doors and filing for bankruptcy.
- You are struggling. Hanging on, but you aren’t planning your next yacht purchase.
- Doing pretty good. Getting by.
Perhaps you’d say a variation, like “We’re not just doing pretty good. We’re doing good.”
Grant me that isn’t a fundamental difference.
Now, is there one of these situations where it doesn’t make sense to market?
May it please the Court, I would like to present a radical idea: Every business situation calls for strong attention to marketing. Not optional. Gotta do it.
Of course, if you’re in situation #2, you could always throw in the towel. Move to The Faroe Islands and change your name.
Otherwise? It’s MARKETING TIME.
THE MARKETING ROLLER COASTER
Maybe you ARE doing JUST GREAT. Why do I need to market (you say to yourself)? I’ve already got more business than I can handle.
Maybe your small business only markets when you run out of work. Then you drum up a bunch of work, get busy and stop marketing. I call that “The marketing roller coaster.”
Small construction companies and contract programmers do this all the time. They sell a big job, work on nothing else until the job is done, maybe a few months. Then they have no income for a while until they line up some more work.
Who wants to live like that? Apparently, some people are happy with it. Or they know no other way to operate. When they run out of work, they take a vacation and watch their bank balance go down down down.
Maybe you have been doing great for ages, no end in sight, tons of business coming in.
The thing you should confront is, there are only two ways to go. Sooner or later the scene will change. Nothing lasts forever.
The new business dries up. Instead of a couple of months between jobs, now it is six months. Or a year. And your bank account has run dry and your creditors are chasing you down the street.
That’s inevitable. Just look at the current scene. You could have had a long run going, years. All of a sudden, no warning, there’s a pandemic and your new business is gone. Take “dem” out of the middle of “pandemic” and you get “panic.” (Note: Not a political statement.)
What could you do about it, suddenly faced with shutdown orders? A lot of companies couldn’t do much, which is why there are now 20 million people out of work.
So you what you do is, long before something goes wildly wrong, you market. And you overwhelm yourself with business. If you are a small construction company, you hire a guy or a company to do marketing, so you don’t stop just because you are busy with a big job.
Then you do one of two things: You turn away work (and moan about wasting money marketing). Or you E-X-P-A-N-D. You hire people, buy more equipment, lease a larger office (or move out of your home and take an office for the first time).
But, you say, I don’t want to be any bigger than I am! I hate managing people.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
I understand that. But don’t delude yourself. That is the choice. There’s a reason why our blog is called “Market or Die.” Sooner or later, that is the choice. Why not get ahead of the curve?
THINK OF IT IS AS INSURANCE
Is it better to be able to comfortably handle every lead you get? Or is it better to be occasionally, if not regularly, overwhelmed with leads?
Having too many leads is a form of insurance. If leads slow down, you still have plenty in the pipeline to work. If you’ve been blowing off leads because you are completely maxed out on delivery, and all of a sudden you finish 9 big jobs and you have people sitting around? Get busy and work the heck out of those leads that have been sitting around.
Is it painful to be spending money on marketing, some of which is inevitably going to waste?
You bet.
But think of it as insurance. You don’t complain about paying for auto insurance even though you don’t get in accidents, right?
Is it more painful to run out of work and money?
Unquestionably.
There’s the stark choice. Make marketing an every day part of your business operations. Spending time and money on it ALWAYS, every week. Organizing your company, your business model, around that idea.
It’s not always comfortable.
If you wanted to be comfortable all the time, you wouldn’t have started your own business, right? You would have gone to work for the Post Office.
