Have You Ignored Marketing Your Business?

In the past few weeks, I’ve been brainstorming about ways to strategically position my business for growth. I want to increase volume per client and widen my geographical market. I also want to be sure the message my business gives about its services, customer experience, and expectations are clear and correct. I have to admit, it’s has been a little overwhelming in restructuring and editing my working business plan. In today’s atmosphere of business, an entrepreneur has to have a working business plan. Be fluid in your operations and strategy to achieve growth and generate revenue.

Being fluid doesn’t mean always changing the entire purpose or foundation of your business. It means being able to adjust to the market, competition, and your buyer’s persona.

Know when to seek help and guidance in decisions about business if you are unsure. You can’t do it all by yourself and expect everything executed at its best. This is what your professional support team is for. I called a few friends who have had their business for a few years and would understand my frustrations. They gave me good perspectives. They both reminded me of the importance of balancing working with current clients and marketing your business for new ones.

When you first start your business most of us are eager and excited about getting that first customer. You work hard to make sure you are providing great customer service and producing work that exceeds expectations. These behaviors usually continue with the next several customers. Before you know it,  you’re working hard to maintain clients to ensure a long-term commitment and repeated business.

This is where it can get challenging.

Don’t get caught up in working in the business where you forget to work on the business. Maintaining the clients you have are important. But if you want to grow and increase volume, then you must keep a pipeline of prospects. You have to always be closing a new sale. Says the person who spent years as a commission only Mortgage Broker. If I didn’t have a pipeline, I didn’t get paid. Keeping a pipeline requires you to market your business. As the Chief Everything Officer, you have to know when to switch hats. Wearing the Salesman and Marketer hat should be something you do regularly. I myself am still learning how to balance this. It’s a journey and learning curve, but we will master it.

One of my friends reminded me of how important it is to keep producing content. She’s right. It is important. Creating content for your business, blog, or brand helps build credibility. You want visitors to your website and prospects to trust you are able to produce what it is you are selling. One great thing about content is that it can be repurposed. You can use the recent powerpoint slide you created for a one-time presentation as a webinar. Repackaged it and offer it as a free webinar to grow your subscriber list.

Constantly creating content helps build and establish your brand. Remember, branding isn’t just what your logo or website looks like. It’s the experience you create with your audience and how they feel about your business. Having lots of content, and then repurposing that content, is a great way to market your business and grow your company’s brand.

If you want to grow your business, you have to market your business. If you want to get more subscribers to your personal blog, then you have to market your blog. If you want your pipeline to stay full and sales to stay up, then, as you know, you must market. There are several mediums you can use to market your business. Social media is a popular one and if done right, can be rewarding. You can also take advantage of inexpensive ads whose audience is your target market.

You have to think BIG and if you want to be big, you must be willing to do the work of those who have made it big. They didn’t achieve that level of success without marketing. You have to market to sale.

How are you balancing out marketing while working in your business?