You’re Not Spending Enough Time With Your Marketing Team

This post is for any business owner that hires an online marketer because they don’t have the time to do it themselves.

Our expenses always equals our income

I was reading a book on personal finance the other day called The Richest Man in Babylon. It’s a creative collection of stories that dispenses financial wisdom through ancient parables set in the city of Babylon. My friend Ron Mendoza from New Day Financial called it “The only financial book you’ll ever need”. Here’s a quote that I immediately related to

“That what each of us calls our ‘necessary expenses’ will always grow to equal our incomes unless we protest to the contrary”

People never feel that they can save money because their expenses somehow always equal their income. If you start earning more money, you’ll always find something important to spend it on. It could be bills, it could be hiring someone new for your business; it could be that kitchen remodel that the house ‘desperately needs’. This particular part of the book encourages the readers to rethink what they consider important any deny some luxuries so that you can begin to save for later life.

Preparing for the future is hard. It’s one of the hardest forms of self control that we have to accomplish. Insurance agents, financial advisors, CPAs, and mortgage officers are forever dismayed with the mountains of extra work their clients need to do because they didn’t prepare for the inevitable in advance. We’ve become accustomed to instant gratification in all areas of our life, preparing for the future is the antithesis of instant gratification and so we don’t give it much thought. Or we procrastinate.

Time is money, and we don’t have enough of either

This doesn’t just apply to money. As usual I read this book with one eye on how it might apply to online marketing and the parallels here are undeniable. Let’s talk about this lesson in terms of the time you should be spending building your businesses online presence.

When I talk about an online presence, I’m talking any area of your business that is seen or consumed online, including:

• Social media accounts and posts
• Your website
• Your blog or news page
• Online directories like Google or Yelp
• Videos or podcasts.
• Any other kind of content relating to your business that is viewed online.

Often this content doesn’t give you immediate results. It takes at least 6 months for some of these assets to start giving you returns and even longer before it really starts working or you. It’s time consuming and you need to be consistent. But it’s worth it. Eventually.

The majority of clients I work with have told me, at some point or another, that they simply don’t have the time to spend on their online presence. They don’t have enough time to build a good online presence because the time they spend on other things (like actually running the business) always grows to equal their work hours. That’s why they hire me.

You’re the biggest expert on your business

But here’s the problem, I can never know as much about your business as you do. Even if you hire marketers that specialize in your field, they won’t know what makes your business unique (Your USP) or how best to communicate that USP online.

If you want to build an online presence but don’t have the time to give your own input, you run the risk of it being bland, cookie cutter, full of misinformation or unrepresentative of the business you’ve worked hard to keep. You need to find the time to work with your marketer so that they can do their job effectively.

The best marketers will make it easy for you

The best online presence is built when you apply your knowledge of your business and industry to what your marketer knows about communicating that knowledge. Its a two part system but a good marketer will help to make it easier for you. Here are some ways your marketer can help you:

• Give you the right questions. Businesses tend to answer the questions they want to answer, not the ones the customers and clients are actually asking. An effective marketer will be able to identify which questions will lead to the best kind of content.
• Translate content into various platforms. Often called content leverage, this means taking one piece of content and translating it across a variety of platforms. For example, a video can be stripped for sound and become a podcast. Or quotes on Facebook. A good marketer will know how to contextualize bits of information that you give for various platforms.
• Give you easy ways to communicate your knowledge and ideas. Starting out on any online platform is difficult and you shouldn’t need to take the time to learn every one. Your marketer should give you easy ways to communicate information to them so they can post it online in its most effective way.

If your marketer is doing these things effectively, you only need to spend time talking about what you know the most about. But you do need to take the time to do it.

You still need to take the time

We understand that when you hire a marketer, often it’s because you don’t have the time to do this yourself. But here’s some things to remember:

• Your workload is never going to go away
• Your workday will be full no matter how long it is
• The most effective marketing comes with a close partnership with your marketer.
• You need to make the time so that your marketer is armed with everything they need to market effectively.

“That what each of us calls our ‘necessary tasks’ will always grow to equal our work hours unless we protest to the contrary”