Marketing: Full-Time Commitment

I have been remiss in upholding the number one commandment regarding marketing, branding and effective sales generation - maintaining a full-time commitment to marketing.

While I am torn between many fronts, all demanding my time, I spend too much in some places, not enough in others and avoid the obvious when it comes to what needs the most work, attention, time and effort.

And my business web sites? Don’t even go there. Well, not literally don’t go there, but if I visited them one-tenth as often as others, and spent a twentieth of the time I spend researching, talking, blogging, forum browsing, personally e-mailing, talking on the phone with my video business friends across the country, designing a new production demo DVD, sending out contracts, shooting, editing and producing video product...

...well, you know where I am headed with this. I have realized for quite some time that I am not maintaining a core element of my overall marketing approach - my web sites.

I am not cleaning up broken links, upgrading outdated clips, revising basic information, improving and enhancing aesthetics or developing smoother navigation aspects. If my current range of web sites is as confusing to my visitors as it has become to me, I am in deep...
...fill in the blank.

While I do not adhere to the philosophy of so many others where entertainment, cutesy graphics, page after page of smoothly introduced non-information, overwhelming rhetoric and teasers or philosophical poetic passages seems the focus, I do admit that I am not maintaining my site with dedication, much less vigor.

This is all soon to change, folks. In a few more weeks, between a relatively light first quarter 2009, a medium-heavy second quarter in progress, and an anticipated ALWAYS HEAVY third quarter summer production schedule headed up by graduation events, followed by summer youth sports, dance recital, martial arts events and more, I intend to upgrade my clips, make navigation of my various business web sites more user friendly, update my pricing and available services information, make everything tighter, more eye-pleasing and easy on the brain.

This, of course, must be done in conjunction with, and continuance of, all my other ongoing marketing efforts. The blog must roll. The Twitter and Facebook posts must continue. The direct mail campaigns must remain uppermost on my list. The new promo DVD (DVDs actually) must get done and get out. The phone calls to and from must continue, the e-mails answered and comments/questions sent or answered, and the contracts signed.

All this and more sums up a significant and successful marketing strategy. No one of the above, or any of the other possibilities I failed to mention, will keep you rolling along, keep the cash flow flowing in and of itself. You need it all. You need to find the time and dedication to do it all. And, most importantly, if you never spend a moment fretting over what it takes to get your search engine rankings above page 10, you absolutely must find and schedule the time to update, change, adjust, improve or simply remain familiar with your web site(s). Weekly, if possible.

If You Market, You Will Make It! © 2009 Earl Chessher