It’s a common thing for everyone, not just business owners, that when the going is good one tends to sit back and reap the fruits of their labour… this is great, but then what?
What happens when those rewards start to ebb off and you find yourself scrambling to make ends meet?
It really doesn’t matter how long you have been in business - you should ALWAYS be marketing your business. Always. You need to keep those good times going, so that you can sit back and reap the fruits of your labour.
Not making sense?
Let’s paint a couple of pictures:
SCENARIO ONE:
You’ve been running your business for a few years now. Those early years were HARD. A start up with little to no capital, just a really cool idea and the rest you learned along the way and hoped to high heaven you were doing it right.
Eventually, you start making some money and you (smartly) re-invest it into your business, specifically your marketing so you can get more money.
Your strategy pays off and suddenly you’re getting lots of business.
You’ve got it made right? It’s cool - time to kick back and stop investing in marketing your business and figure that what you were doing before was enough.
But then those leads that your last effort produced dry up and your cash flow plummets and then that sinking feeling: you have to start again. Your marketing momentum has fizzled out and you need to build it all again, and again with little to no cash behind you.
No kicking back for you.
SCENARIO TWO:
Take the first set of circumstances up to the part where you re-invest your initial earnings into your marketing strategy, which pays off for you.
The leads are coming in thick and fast and you;re focused on keeping those leads super satisfied, which in itself generates additional income. You invest some of your revenue into your marketing strategy to keep those leads coming in.
Time to kick back and enjoy right?
Yes and No.
In Scenario Two, obviously you made a wise business decision and re-invested some of your hear earned revenue into marketing your business. You have momentum going and you are looking after your current customers. But in additional to everything else, just reading it and knowing as a business owner what else you have to do, every day, feels exhausting right?
Of course it does.
Everyone tells you that you need to do all these things, what they don’t tell you from the beginning is that you don’t have to do it alone.
So, back to scenario two: You have put money into marketing to keep the leads going by engaging a service (or even an in house person) to assist you in planning and execution to keep your marketing mojo nice and high. You also invest some cash into automating your business a little bit and giving your customers the feel and experience that you want them to have.
Now you can chill out, right? It’s all running super smoothly and you;re making some take home cash - it’s cool now, you did everything right, time to reap the rewards.
Yeah, sorry - not quite.
Theoretically, things get a bit easier as your cash flow improves and you can engage some more assistance and create some new jobs, taking some things from your to do tray - but you will always be highly involved until you either sell your business or retire.
You’ll have plenty of time to kick back and relax once you have sold your business for an insane amount of money. In the meantime your focus is on the build.
You wouldn’t lay the foundations of a new home and just sit back; the first storm or stiff wind would cause a few issues. The same is true for your business - you need to lay the foundations and then build the rest of the structure before it is worth your while to sell.
Bottom line: When do you stop marketing your business?
YOU DON’T