How to Overcome Marketing Procrastination

 How to Overcome Marketing  Procrastination                                                                                                                                       

 by Gerry Black 

Success as a business owner or entrepreneur can be boiled down to one thing:

How good you are at doing the right things faster and either getting rid of the other stuff, delegating it or creating an automated system that can free you up to do things you like to do.

One of those “right things“ is marketing. Referrals are great but what about when they dry up? Then what?

Investing in your marketing today – maybe creating an email follow up campaign, or rewriting your web copy so your site will actually send qualified sales leads your way or crafting a guide you can use as a lead generation tool – will pay off down the line by minimizing those feast or famine stretches we all go through at some point.

So, if marketing can help us generate more sales with less heavy lifting, why do so many of us keep putting it off?

Here are 5 common reasons:

Reason 1: You don’t enjoy marketing. And, like most things we don’t enjoy, typically it goes to the other To Do list – the one we never seem to get to. But marketing is something that has to be done. By you or someone else or you’re business could be at risk. Sooner or later, the referral well may run dry and if you aren’t equipped with a marketing system of some sort in place to attract more business, it could be a real shocker.

Reason 2: You don’t enjoy certain aspects of marketing. Maybe it’s copywriting. Or using automation. Or creating a compelling online selling story. Figure out what it is exactly that you really don’t like to do and don’t want to do and hire someone to do just that part. You can’t move forward until you move past the missing piece to your puzzle.

Reason 3: You don’t know how to handle the task or job. Budgeting and bookkeeping are a big block for us creative types. That’s why I get help. I came to realize over time that I have to be involved to some degree but I try to stay on the outside when I can. My social media technical skills needed upgrading about 2 months ago. I didn’t know how to shorten a lengthy blog URL so that I could use it with Twitter. It was holding me back. Now that I know how to do it, I am using Twitter to get useful information out to people who may have a need for it. Do some research or get someone to help you understand whatever it is you aren’t sure about.    

Reason 4: You simply can’t find the time.  Then, you have two choices: Schedule time to do your marketing or find someone to help you. For about  six months, I kept putting off writing my new website copy. And I’m a copywriter! Finally, I realized I needed to schedule time to write the copy. I kept putting it on my list – the one with all the stuff I’d kinda like to do and need to do but never actually quite find time to do. I had to block out the time.

Reason 5: You feel stuck. Sometimes we just need a little momentum. The first thing to do is to break it down so you know what you actually need. Then, start with the easier parts.  When I start a new client website, the home page for me is the toughest part to write. So I stay away from that at the beginning. I may begin writing the FAQ page or the Contact Us page. That gets me going. The progress generates excitement and I carry on from there.     

As business owners, our job is to create an extraordinary service or product that can help people get what they want and then, tell the world about it.

If no one knows about it, what’s the point?

Start building your marketing system today and set yourself up to thrive in 2012.