Placing all your hopes and dreams in one activity

This is one of those missteps I see all to often with designers and, frankly, lots of small businesses. The scenario goes something like this: A designer is starting to get slow with no projects booked down the road and the phone isn’t ringing. Since they were busy, they hadn’t been doing anything marketing-wise and now they’re getting freaked.

So, they decide to whip up a postcard, maybe send out a press release about some outdated news or get back to attending a club meeting or other networking event. The problem is they’re already behind the eight ball.

They put all their hopes in their nifty little postcard or release. They labor over it. Tweak this and that. The have the time now, because there’s no paying work on board. They finally send out their masterpiece or get up the guts to attend a networking thing. They fully expect to be overwhelmed with work from this one little promotional task.

And then nothing happens.

Marketing takes time. It takes several points of contact. If you’re not actively marketing when you’re at your busiest, when the slow time hits, and it will, it can take months to pull things together. Risky business.

It’s important to plan your marketing tasks several months in advance and do as much as you can to put them on autopilot. Have press release templates ready. Sneak in a direct mail design here and there while you’re waiting for approvals or dedicate some mornings, evenings or weekend on a regular basis to work on your marketing so you have several irons in the fire ready to go.

Until the next
Marketing Minute
all the best,
nt