How to Calculate Marketing Time
/It took me awhile to learn that people don't pay for good ideas.
People pay for making ideas happen.
That was how I embarked on my search to discover how much time should be spent getting the business, and how much time should be spend doing the business. Here's the good news:
20% marketing
5% administration and management
75% production
Break that down.
Say you're ready to work five 10-hour days -- a 50 hour week.
Twenty percent of your time must be spent marketing.
Twenty percent of 50 is 10.
Ten hours a week are for marketing. When you're at full capacity.
Full capacity is the number of clients you can serve in 75% of the work week hours.
Seventy-five percent of 50 is 35.
How many clients can you work with in 35 hours?
To make the math easy, let's say seven: five hours for each client, each week.
But right now
you only have three clients.
Three clients get 15 hours.
What many people do is expand the amount of time they give those three clients.
Thrilled to have clients, they rationalize that if they over-deliver these three people will refer others.
That concept has two catches:
The people referred are going to ask about price and service, and expect the same value.
There won't be enough new clients, quickly enough, from this small set, to keep the business expanding.
All hours not serving clients get transferred to marketing.
Thirty-five hours are for production.
Fifteen hours are being used for existing clients,
leaving 20 hours each week to add to the marketing time budget.
There is always going to be a 10 hour marketing budget; add the 20 hours that aren't being spent with clients and there are now 30 hours available for marketing -- at this stage of the business.
With a marketing plan you know what to do.
And now you know when to do it.
Sweet.