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If you want to successfully market your business you are going to have to invest time, money or both. In the beginning. a lot of business owners will opt for the ‘invest time’ option, but the fact is as a business owner time is your most precious asset. So it is important to ensure that you are getting the best return on investment for your time. Keep on reading to find out 9 time smart marketing tips for busy business owners.
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9 TIME SMART MARKETING TIPS FOR BUSY BUSINESS OWNERS
1. Create content for places where the content lifespan is longer
If you are spending time creating content then you should also focus on ensuring that you get the most life out of that piece of content. Most business owners focus the majority of their energy and time on creating social media content, which, on the whole, has a short life span. Other than on TikTok a piece of content on social media will realistically live for anywhere between a day to a week (depending on the platform). Whereas if you focus your energy on long-form content such as a podcast, YouTube channel or a blog your content has the opportunity to be consumed months even years after it was originally consumed. Especially when it is optimised for search or referenced in other content.
2. Optimise your content for search (SEO)
Creating long-form content is one thing, but if you really want to be time smart then learn how to optimise your content for search. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is where you make a piece of content with the aim that it will rank for a keyword when someone is searching. This technique is commonly used for blog posts and webpages, but the technique can also be applied to YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok (and no doubt more in the future).
By putting in the extra effort to optimise your content for search it will mean the amount of times that piece of content is consumed will increase. Rather than it is just being by people who are currently aware of your business you are opening that content up to be consumed by people who have never even heard of your business. So it is a great tool for brand awareness. And since your content is based on a specific topic, that the person was searching for, it is even easier for that person, when properly directed, to become a customer or client.
3. Create your content plan before creating your content
Having a content plan is important for two reasons. When you don’t have a content plan and go to create content you’ll likely spend time thinking “What should I talk about in this piece of content?”. Not only does this waste time, but when you create content on the fly you are more likely to create something that is not going to support your marketing and sales goals.
Whereas when you plan your content in advance you can ensure you are planning your content with your marketing and sales goals front of mind. You can make sure that you are creating the right balance of content that is needed to take people through the entire buyer journey.
Not currently planning your content in advance and not sure how to get started? Download a free copy of my content marketing plan workbook by putting your details in the form below.
4. Batch and schedule your content in advance
Whether you are making long-form content (YouTube, podcast, blog), email content or social media content if you want to be as efficient as possible with your time then you should batch create and schedule your content in advance.
Batch creating your content is the most time-efficient way to create content. Especially if the content you are creating requires any type of setup (often required for video or podcast) or it involves you creating anything in a specific piece of software like Canva or CapCut. When you create multiple pieces of content back to back you’ll likely get into a groove and your content creation process will become as fast as possible.
If you batch create your content in advance then you might as well schedule it in advance too. Not only is this great for ensuring that what you create is distributed, but for social media content it means your content can be posted without you having to log in and post. Given that most business owners when posting live will get distracted by notifications and start scrolling this can save a lot of time.
The scheduler I use is called Later and I’ve used it for years. You can currently use it to schedule across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and Pinterest. To check it out for yourself click here.
Find out more about saving time by batching your content by clicking here.
| WANT TO GET A CONTENT STRATEGY CREATED SPECIFICALLY FOR YOUR BUSINESS?
Without a solid content strategy, you can spend a lot of time creating social media content and see little results. As an award-winning content marketer, who does all of my own marketing, and a Chartered Marketer, with over a decade of professional marketing experience, I’m able to make content with a solid strategy to ensure sales, but in a modern way that will cut through today’s busy online world. And the best bit is it doesn’t have to take forever. In fact, I run content strategy days (evergreen content and launch content) so you can get an overarching content strategy and then a launch or 3-month content plan created in just one day. To find out more about my Strategy Days click here. Not sure what open is best for you? Book a free, non-obligation, introduction call here. |
5. Create automated email sequences
When it comes to email marketing you have three main options: send a newsletter to your whole list, send targeted emails to segments of your list and send triggered emails based on an action a subscriber has taken. Most business owners will focus on a newsletter, but this is actually a time-consuming type of email marketing because you are constantly having to create a new email. A time smart marketing alternative is to create triggered automated email sequences.
What this means is that if a subscriber takes an action then they will get a sequence of emails. The beauty of this type of email marketing is once set up it can run for months even years.
Not currently using automated email sequences? Here are 3 automated email campaigns you should consider to get started.
6. Repurpose your content
There is no denying that creating content is time-consuming so your aim is to get the most out of every piece of content that you make. Repurposing is a great way to squeeze even more life out of a piece of content. There are two main ways to think about repurposing your social media content. Firstly, you can post the same piece of content across multiple platforms. For example, if you’ve spent the time making a great video then you better be posting that everywhere you can and with a tool like Repurpose.io that can be automated (saving you even more time). Another way is to reuse content on the same platform. The best way to do this is to build a bank of content that is evergreen and can be posted whenever. Or seasonal content that you’ll use again next year.
Given how much time social media content can take, the percentage of your followers that see a post and the lifespan of a post I am big on repurposing social media content. I go into even more detail about repurposing your social media content to the maximum here.
7. Delegate or outsource (parts of) your marketing
There comes a point when it isn’t physically possible to save any more time without impacting your marketing output and performance. First, you should always look to see if there is any tech you can use, but sometimes you need a person, but that person doesn’t have to be you. You can consider delegating to someone in your business or you can outsource to a marketing agency or a freelance marketer.
When it comes to handing your marketing over to someone else you have lots of options. Lots of business owners think it has to be an all-or-nothing thing, but it doesn’t. You can identify specific marketing tasks such as content creation, email marketing or managing your DMs.
To get started think about what marketing works and if you could do more of that would generate more sales (and therefore the income generated should cover the cost of hiring or outsourcing). Or another way to look at it is what tasks take you longer than the average person to do. Therefore another person will be able to do them quicker and you’ll be able to use that time for another income-generating activity that will generate more money than you are paying the other person.
8. Review your analytics
The easiest way to waste your time is to spend time on marketing that isn’t working. That is why reviewing your analytics is so important. You should know what you are trying to achieve through your marketing. Are you trying to drive people to your website, to get DMs on social media, enquiries through your contact form, applications filled in or a sale?
Remind yourself of your marketing goals and then check to see what is happening. Is your marketing doing what you want it to do? Is one channel performing better than something else?
Ask new clients how they found out about your business and what made them decide to buy or sign up?
The more information you have both from a quantitative and qualitative position the more you can ensure that you spend your time on the marketing that is working best.
9. Digital Advertising
I’ve left this for last because if you’ve gone through all of my time smart marketing tips and you still just don’t have enough time then it is worth considering moving from a time-investment to a money-investment. The beauty of digital advertising is once you’ve got it set up it can run for months, even years, without minimal time investment. You’ll just need to monitor and possibly tweak if you see a dip in results. Another benefit of digital advertising is you can use it for the part of the buyer journey that needs extra activity at the moment. For example, if you know your online visibility and brand awareness are weak you can focus on doing marketing to introduce your business to new people. However, if you feel enough people are aware of your business, but you aren’t getting enough conversions then you could look at doing retargeting campaigns to optimise that part of the buyer journey.
Bonus – Let AI do it all
I couldn’t write a blog post about time saving marketing tips for busy business owners and not mention AI. AI is changing the face of marketing and making tasks that used to take hours now take minutes. I am not an AI expert but they are plenty out there that you can learn from.
That’s it. You know now 9 time smart marketing tips for busy business owners.
Making your business takes time, money or both. And there is no getting away from that. But by following these tips you’ll be able to make the most of your time investment.
Let me know in the comments which tip you liked best.
| WANT TO RUN A THRIVING FINANCIAL BUSINESS?
I’m a Business and Marketing Strategist that specialises in helping businesses in the financial space. I help my clients to strategically market, and grow, thriving financial businesses that change their live and the lives of others. To find out more about how we can work together check out my services here. And to discuss your precise needs book a free, no-obligation, introduction call to discuss your business here. |
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