How Much Time Should You Spend Marketing Your Business?
Time is one of your most valuable resources, both as a human and a business owner. But how much time should be allocated to marketing your business?
There isn't one answer that fits all. But there are some factors that can help you determine how much time you allocate to marketing, and when you're spending too much.
How much time is enough? It depends on your marketing plan
The time that someone with a thriving multi-modality clinic will be different to someone who is an individual practitioner. Someone who uses multiple channels to market their business will spend more time than someone who is still learning how to market as a new practitioner.
So let's note down the ways that you market your business:
Are you sending out regular newsletters?
How many social media platforms are you using for your marketing efforts?
Are you using Facebook groups or live videos as a form of marketing?
Do you have in-person marketing strategies such as workshops, free talks or even flyer drops?
Are there any other ways that you are consistently marketing yourself?
Different marketing strategies will require different investments of time. Writing a post on Facebook should take less than preparing and delivering a workshop. Sending out a newsletter once a month won't need a massive chunk of time compared to weekly blogs.
Note down roughly how long you spend on each task either per day, week or month. This gives you an estimate of how long you're spending or will spend if you stick to the plan.
How does that amount of time feel? Is it too much, or not enough? Is it just right? This might depend on the answer to my next question.
How much time do you have free to market your business?
Let's be realistic here. Unless you're a brand new practitioner, you don't have a dozen hours every week free to work on your marketing. So let's do so maths on how much you DO have.
What can you commit each week or each day without it significantly cutting into your time as a practitioner?
Maybe there's a 30 or 60-minute block each morning where you're at the clinic but not seeing clients. Or perhaps you finish up at 2.30pm, but don't have to leave to pick up the kids until 3.
THAT is the time you have free to market.
Now have a look at the difference between how much time you have free, and how much is needed to achieve your current marketing goals. If there's a big difference, it's time to look closer at what is feasible for you to achieve at this stage.
How long I spend on my marketing (and why)
Perhaps you're looking for a more concrete example of how someone might spend their time on marketing. Let's have a look at mine!
In terms of my own marketing strategy, I am currently:
Posting blogs weekly
Repurposing blogs on LinkedIn every fortnight
Sending out weekly newsletters
Using Facebook as my main social media platform
Sharing daily on my Facebook page
Posting in 7 business-related Facebook groups consistently
Doing 1 Facebook live per week on average
Before you get overwhelmed, remember I have been in business since 2015, and marketing is my job! It's taken me about 2 years to grow my marketing strategy to this level of diversity. So if you're not quite ready to take on more than one or two tasks, that's absolutely fine. In fact, I recommend that practitioners keep it simple, especially if they are new praccies!
Ready for how long I spend on my marketing?
2 full days (16 hours total) at the start of each quarter to write my blogs and schedule my newsletters
15 minutes on Sunday to schedule Facebook posts for my page based on the blog/topic for the week
30 minutes each weekday posting in the Facebook groups
15 minutes each week set aside for Facebook live time
Once you do the math, it's not quite as crazy as you'd expect. For Q3, it works out to around 250 minutes per week, or 36 minutes average per day.
So you can see that if you're doing much less than me in terms of marketing, it's easy to keep your business marketing down to 15-30 minutes per day.
Spending too much time on your marketing?
Here are some simple steps to take.
Batch-create your content. It's much easier to spend one or two days working on 13 weeks of content than to find 45-60 minutes every Monday to do the same thing.
Outsource what you can. This might be hiring a VA to do 1-2 hours of your marketing each week, or getting a health writer to batch your content for you.
Ditch anything that isn't paying off, prioritise what is. If you've spent 15 minutes every day curating a pretty picture for Instagram for the past 12 months but never had a client book via Instagram - either get rid of it, or at least post less often!
You're better off showing up where your ideal clients can find you. That's exactly why I spend 30 minutes each day in Facebook business groups!
If you need help hashing out a marketing plan that fits with your time, I'm here to help.
Book in a 1:1 marketing support session here, and we'll find a way to make your marketing efficient and effective.