In This Episode

One of the biggest enigmas for small businesses is balancing time vs. money spent on their Marketing Plan.  When first starting out most small business owners have more time than money so the Marketing Plan is often 90%+ focused on time with 10% or less focused on money.  For example, a new business owner may spend a lot of time going to different networking events at things like the Chamber of Commerce or BNI.  If they are more tech savvy chances are the owner will be spending time on social media.

Often the first dollars spent on Marketing happens with something like launching a web site or printing business cards or perhaps a 1-page flier or brochure.  So early on the time piece of Marketing tends to dominate.  But at some point there needs to be a shift to where more dollars are spent vs. time.

One of the ways to get better oriented on the Marketing Plan is to plug it into your Profit Plan where it shows how you’re going to drive sales.  What is the sales goal for the year?  How much of those sales can you already see?  What’s left between your sales goal and what you can already see is where the Marketing Plan comes in.  To start we would suggest you look at our 1-pager of Marketing Channels by Category which we referenced several times during the show.  Click here to download a copy.

During the show today we also shared several stories on the Marketing front and the importance of keeping that investment mindset.  This includes an early experience with our coaching company Maximum Value Partners where we sent 1,000 letters to Wisconsin and the results we had from that mailing.  Enjoy the show!

 

People, Companies and Resources We Mentioned in the Show

Business Network International/BNI (https://www.bni.com)

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