How Effective Is Your Marketing Approach?

This is actually a difficult question to answer, without having an insight into your own approach. It's critical to be aware of the fact that successful marketing involves having a strong strategy in place and maintaining a focus on implementing that strategy. Without these two elements, it's very difficult to succeed.

Interestingly, my own experience suggests that making the time to implement anything is often the biggest problem that many small business owners face. The reality is that this is usually due to the fact that marketing is not really treated as being a significant priority. In other words, there are always other things to do.

So what else could possibly be more important than the future success of your business? As small business owners, the unfortunate reality of the situation is that we are often expected to be fighting fires in all areas of the business. This may mean dealing with customer requests, or finding out why suppliers aren't able to deliver what they have promised.

Although these actions may be important to the daily running of your business, they do tend to work against the process of long-term planning. You may decide to take an optimistic approach and to think that you will deal with marketing, once things get that bit quieter. But is this a realistic approach?

The truth is that there will always be other areas of the business that get in the way. You'll always have phone calls, or urgent requests from employees. If you don't set aside dedicated time for dealing with your marketing requirements, then it's fair to say that progress simply won't be made.

With this in mind, you need to create appropriate time slots each week. Don't fall into the trap of believing that these are flexible and that you can always catch up on lost time at a later date. These marketing slots need to be permanent fixtures within your work diary. You may need to show real determination to keep things this way.

By concentrating your efforts on this area of the business, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to find success. Having a clear plan in place and the opportunity to put it into action will ensure that you change the overall direction of travel. Don't settle for an existing strategy that's clearly not paying dividends.