When your marketing efforts pay off and you get busy with client work, it can create a dilemma.
Your client work needs to be a priority. You’re being paid for it. You need to meet deadlines, establish yourself as a professional, and set yourself up for repeat business and referrals.
Depending on how busy you get, it can feel like there’s no time left over for marketing.
But continuing to be visible to your audience and nurturing promising leads is important. It’s how you’ll have new work lined up when you finish the projects on your plate.
That said, you may need to adjust how much time you put into your marketing, so you can do great work for your clients.
The good news is, you can get a lot done on the marketing front in just a few minutes a day.
If you have five minutes…
If you have a spare five minutes in your schedule — an amount of time you can almost always find — you can do one of several useful things.
You can make a LinkedIn post. It doesn’t have to be long or involved. You can touch on something you’ve learned recently, a win you’re celebrating, or a quick tip based on your own experience.
You can send a thank you note. This could be to a client you recently finished a project with, to a subject matter expert who sat for an interview, or to someone you haven’t connected with in a while, but who has made a difference in your life.
You can send an email to one of your connections. It doesn’t have to be long. Just a quick hello. Ask how they’re doing and what they’re up to. You’re just touching base and reminding them you’re there.
If you have 15 minutes…
Let’s say you have a little more time. You feel good about spending the first 15 minutes of your day on marketing. How best to spend that time?
You could send one of your existing clients an idea for a new project. These kinds of pitches are often the most effective. You already have history with the client. You know their product line and audience. So when you pass along an exciting idea with a note that you’d like to be the one to handle it, it often gets a yes.
You could spend those 15 minutes researching businesses in your target niche. Based on what you learn, you could set aside time in the future to send LinkedIn connection requests, introductory emails, or pitches.
Or you could spend that time finding and signing up for a local upcoming event where you’ll have the chance to make connections with potential clients in real life.
If you have 30 minutes…
Maybe you have a full half hour you can dedicate during your day.
In that case, you could do an outline of a blog post or a quick and dirty draft. You could flesh out a section of your post or edit it to make it stronger.
You could send a pitch to a new prospect. These take a little longer to research and write than a pitch you would send to an existing client, but it’s a manageable thing to do in 30 minutes.
Or you could spend that time learning a new skill, tactic, or project type. Will you master it in one 30-minute go? Of course not. But 30 minutes a day over two weeks can turn into a solid handle on something new.
Growing your business doesn’t have to take a ton of time each day. Even if you can only carve out small blocks, you can keep your marketing machine running and the work flowing in.
Don’t Forget…
Starting in November, we’re going to change things up a little bit, specifically regarding these bi-weekly Member Updates.
Don’t worry, they’re not going away! But they will change format a bit. And we will have a new cadence.
In just a few weeks, you’ll start receiving your Member Update weekly on Wednesdays instead of the free email newsletter. Each Wednesday, you’ll get a quick tip or insight geared toward helping you be more successful… links to recently added member’s only content… reminders about upcoming events… an invitation to ask questions… and more.
The change is geared to take a little pressure off your inbox, while increasing the value you get from the newsletter.
Let me know what you think about the change in the comments.
In Case You Missed It
Emotions trigger action in sales and marketing in general. And they’re especially effective in email copywriting, specifically, because of the very nature of email as a communication medium. Emails are direct and personal. They land right in the inbox, where readers often feel a one-to-one connection with the sender. From a practical writing standpoint, it’s smart to use emotional triggers in your email copy, and in her latest Email Marketing column, Michele Peterson gives you 10 ways to bring more emotion into your email messages.
Whatever you’re writing — a sales page, a product page, a blog post, an email — you have an outcome you’re trying to achieve. You may want to raise awareness about your product or brand, draw more traffic to your website, capture more leads, or make more sales. In addition to understanding your purpose, you also need to know what your target audience wants. Then you can meet them where they are. And the best way to do that is with user-focused copy. In my newest UX/CX Copywriting column, I share 10 ways to write copy that’s user friendly.
When it comes to email marketing, how often should you mail your list? In her most recent Reality Blog, Jennifer Ayling explores recommendations from different experts. She walks you through the pros and cons of mailing daily versus once a month and gives you some guidelines for helping provide your readers with a good experience. You can check it out right here.
Mark Your Calendar
October 30: Join me next Wednesday for Digital Copywriter office hours. During this session, I’ll be talking about how to make smart use of LinkedIn comments for building your network. Then we’ll open it up for questions. So, if there’s anything you’ve been feeling stuck on in your business, come share your situation and we’ll troubleshoot it together. And if there’s time, we’ll wrap up with a bit of copy review… which means you can send in your copy for feedback. We are limited by time constraints, so there is no guarantee your work will be reviewed — submissions will be reviewed on a first come, first served basis. Please send submissions in by October 29. You can find all the details for this meeting here.
3 Things You Might Enjoy…
I really enjoyed Ann Handley’s recent newsletter issue on the importance of the “thinking draft.” You can give that a read here (and sign up for her newsletter while you’re at it).
This post on building a personal brand, from Copyblogger, is super helpful.
Whatever you’re writing, you need a strong opening line to hook your reader. Here are 11 ideas you can swipe from Problogger.
That’s all for now. Have a great weekend!
