6 ways to market yourself on Mondays

Hey Stella, I am too busy to plan how to market my services, let alone actually spend 2-3 hours a day marketing.

Ah, my entrepreneurial chickadee. That’s not a question.

But let’s discuss it anyway.

First, marketing. Such a nebulous word. What is marketing, really?

It’s the things you do on a regular basis to spread the word about your business. Or as my client Rob likes to say, marketing is a habit. Just like brushing your teeth or going to the gym.

And who’s too busy to brush their teeth?

(Let’s both pinky swear to start working out-or at least take a walk-in the next 24 hours, okay? Stella falls off that wagon all the time. Fall down 7 times, get up 8 and pretend falling was sort of like a workout, I always say.)

If you don’t do your marketing on a regular basis, the people won’t hear about you.

And when you are too busy to plan how they’ll hear about you-and be invited to work with you-well, then maybe you need to take some things off your plate.

Why? You’re smart. That’s why. You spend your time taking care of clients and marketing your business, or you won’t get clients or business. It’s really that simple.

So here’s the how: Set some time aside each week to plan your marketing, reach out to folks, and create your content. For example, every Monday you might block time to:

* write a 350 word blog post

* send a teaser email to your list with a link to your blog

* write content for your twitter and facebook accounts (and load them into hootsuite)

* send emails to 10 people asking for first sessions (with a link to timedriver)

* send emails to 5 JVs asking for meetings to explore how to support one another

* work out the name & bullet points for your next teleseminar

Do you see how much writing is involved here? And can you see that if you spent 5 hours doing this every Monday, you’d basically be writing your own ticket to a full and profitable business? And which one of these items listed above do you want to pencil into your week…every week? (Recovering Perfectionists take note: you don’t have to do it all at once, my sisters and brothers, just pick one. As Tony Horton of P90X says: “do your best and forget the rest.”)

It makes Stella crazy (the not good kind) when she talks to business owners who are thinking of spending so much money on a website, or SEO, or a sales page for a product. Without a marketing habit or a marketing plan in place!

What that means is: even if they throw a lot of money at the problem, it’s not going to go away.

You have to walk before you can run.

This is why I keep urging you to plan your year ahead of time, get your basic marketing systems in place, and educate yourself about how to write to charm, persuade, inspire, educate and sell. Because Stella wants you to win, and that’s the only way to do it.

* Speaking of planning, Stella just took a whole day to plan out her next year with one of her mentors, Monica Shah. This woman is brilliant, dear reader. If you’re looking for business fundamentals and money breakthroughs, she’s definitely one to tune into. Photo courtesy of the self-timer on Stella’s camera, Miami 2011.