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No time for marketing?

There are many business owners that are successful but want more. They are currently running their companies and making a living. But when asked if they can devote an extra 20 minutes a day to marketing endeavors they almost always give me the same story about how busy they are and when they get home from work they are exhausted. They can’t do another thing and this is a sad situation.

When you love what you do you should be energized to do it all of the time. You should have to force yourself to do something else. You should feel like your missing something when you are not doing it. The truth is that the most successful people in business love what they do. Your definition of success will vary but you cannot succeed without the love because in the long run, it will turn you bitter and looking for something else. Author Brian Tracy asks in one of his books “If you could win the lottery for 1 million, tax free, would you still do what you are doing? Lets change it to 5 million. Now, would you?

So here is a tip. If you work 10 hours a day change that to 10 hours and 20 minutes. Go home write down the next day’s goals and then relax.

What are some things you do to keep excited about your business?

4 Responses

  • Jan 09, 2010

    PAUL ROSENFELD

    Thomas - great discussion topic. In our business of offering text message marketing for small businesses we've seen how small businesses won't engage in marketing too.

    But I think you mid-diagnosis the root cause when you say it's because they don't love what they do. Certainly that could be a percentage of owners. But I think the much more prevalent reason is "they're not marketers" - they're plumbers and veterinarians, or sign makers or massage therapists. They're not marketers. Even more to the point, they don't LIKE marketing. Only marketers LIKE marketing.

    Who likes making posters, sending direct mailers to households, doing networking to ask people for business, and so forth? Very few people. :-)

    Nevertheless, your overall discussion topic is dead on the money. And what we're doing is automating marketing so they don't have to do it. I'll check out your biz, maybe we can connect soon. Best, Paul @Fanminder.com

  • Jan 09, 2010

    CEO

    Marketing? The reason why business owners do not like marketing is because of the various rates of returns they get from different marketing concepts. I am approached nearly 10 times a day by people who want to sell me advertising. My firm spends over $500,000 in advertising per year. I have ads with television, radio, yellow pages, internet and other types of advertising. SOme of them work and I keep using it and others are terrible where I quickly dump them. The one thing I notice is that marketers who cold call me usually are the ones who quote me the highest rates. I'll sometime listen to them, especially if it is an internet type marklet but when the fine print is revealed, the cost per click or thousand is usually 5 times what I am currently paying. I am finding that the people who say they are marketing for comapnies and "bringing them business" are usually preying on inexperienced business owners. Finally, these burned business owners do not want to market their business.

  • Jan 10, 2010

    PAUL ROSENFELD

    Raymond, you really make an excellent point that owners are bombarded with marketing programs. As a marketing company who actually utilizes resellers it's actually simple economics: There's a group of owners who have the savvy, time, and are desiring to save money, so they do marketing themselves. There's lots of tools for that these days.

    Then there's a much larger group with neither the time, nor expertise to do that. They value their time more than their money and for a vriety of other reasons, look to 'experts' to help them. This model is same in payroll (outsourced ADP vs. QB) and many other industries. As soon as someone needs to help the owner, prices go up to account for that service.

    Our resellers need margin. Our prices are significantly higher with resellers than if someone did mobile marketing themselves. But then again, the resellers' role is to make the owner successful. Anyway, think this is quite valuable discussion! Best, Paul

  • Jan 11, 2010

    President and Chief of Customer Happiness

    Good points. Marketing also is the basic day to day things that business owners must do to put themselves ahead of their competition. So our goal is to teach our clients ways to market without thinking "hey I am marketing". Most want to learn, know they need to learn but try to tell us they don't have the time. But we have ways to overcome that. One of the BIG problems is what Raymond expressed. Many marketing companies are out for the money first and then if the client makes some money then thats gravy. The client gets burned a few times and thinks "well that did not work" and they do not do it again. That is where we separate the professionals from the "read a book yesterday and now I am a marketing consultant". I wanted to never be that type of advertising agency so we are non-commisssion. The article was to supposed to show that no matter what you think about business to be successfull you must love what you do and then do more then your competition is doing.

What do you think?

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