Making Time for Marketing

Marketing is essential for every business. I stress the importance of marketing regularly to our clients, and offer marketing consultations in addition to design services.

Recently, while reading an article on - you guessed it - marketing, I realized that I spend a lot of time recommending and reiterating the importance of marketing your business, but have neglected my own. How's that for not practicing what I preach?

So, I decided to start focusing more on marketing TAMAR Graphics. I began by reading more and more articles (which I will continue to feature both on our website, and here), and then started finding some amazing resources! One of my favorites is TeleClass International - a site promoting many FREE hour-long classes over the telephone. Sound difficult? Well, it really isn't, and there are some fantastic marketing teleclasses available. Some of my favorite teleclasses are led by Sue Rasmussen, Marty Marsh and Michael Losier. I have gained a tremendous amount of marketing tips, strategies and techniques through these free classes that have already been put to good use - not only for TAMAR Graphics, but for our existing clients, as well.

One of the most significant tips I received through these classes was to schedule marketing for my business like I would schedule a project for a client. Marketing your business is just as important as taking care of those paying clients or customers. If you aren't marketing yourself or your business regularly, you will be more prone to that dreaded feast-or-famine cycle. But that can be avoided easily by setting up a regularly scheduled time to just market. I've taken that advice for TAMAR Graphics, and rather than trying to fit an hour or so of marketing in every day, I took Marty Marsh's suggestion, and implemented "Client-Free Fridays." (Thank you, Marty!)

So now, I work Monday through Thursday for clients, and Fridays are dedicated to working on TAMAR Graphics. I'll be honest, it was difficult to do the first two Fridays. In fact, I felt a little guilty. But, what I eventually noticed was that from Monday to Thursday I am able to work on client's projects more productively, because I know that the "extra" stuff - invoicing, paperwork, website updates, etc. - will be taken care of on Friday. This easier-than-it-sounds strategy has helped me work more efficiently for our clients, and at the same time increased business, simply because I've made time for marketing.

Need a little help setting up a marketing schedule, or wonder what kinds of things to include in your marketing calendar? Feel free to drop me a line or, you can join our mailing list and receive a FREE 2006 Marketing Cycle calendar which will help you keep track of where you should be with your marketing schedule throughout the year.

Until next time...

Tamar Wallace
TAMAR Graphics