Sophie Porter: Content Specialist

On weekends or during the week? During your quietest times or your busiest? This is when to do digital marketing

Although, like so many things in life, there’s no perfect time to ‘do’ digital marketing, there are some more effective times you absolutely should be doing digital marketing in order to elevate your business. So, here, I’ll go through when to do digital marketing. 

When to do digital marketing

A discussion I often find myself having with clients and fellow marketers alike, I find that busy business owners – especially sole traders and owners of very small businesses, say 3 or 4 people – tend only to focus on marketing during their quietest periods; periods when they’re not selling much of anything at all or have wrapped up all their client work and are wondering where the next client is coming from. 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely understandable, especially if you’re a sole trader, relying on only yourself to do everything! 

When you’re busy packing and shipping orders over Christmas or delivering a comprehensive 12 week training programme to the employees of a sizable business, the last thing you’ll even be considering is running some Facebook ads or writing a catalogue of blogs to publish on your site in order to boost organic traffic.

No, during those busy periods, you’re focused on getting the job done; delivering your service or packing & shipping your products. 

However… 

During your busiest periods is when you should be doing the most digital marketing. 

Yes, it’s true. I promise. 

In reality, launching any kind of digital marketing campaign or singular activity when you’re quiet is the absolute worst time to do digital marketing – by then it’s too late and you’re only setting yourself up to continually experience a vicious and unsustainable cycle of peaks and troughs in work & income. 

What you want – what any business of any size needs – is a steady and continuous stream of leads and sales, right? Reliability and consistency; keeping you busy throughout the year in a manageable and forecastable way. 

But how do you achieve that when, during certain times of the year, you’re too busy doing your actual job to think about marketing as well!? 

Start small, and simply be consistent. 

Set aside 30 minutes on a Friday afternoon (or your quietest day of the week!) to focus on scheduling a week’s worth of social media posts. 

Spend an hour on the first or last day of the month setting up a Facebook ad to run throughout the month, aimed at generating leads for a specific service or, if you sell products, selling a specific product or range of products to a specific audience group. 

Dedicate 2 hours every 2 weeks to writing a new blog or news article for your website about something related to your business that you’re especially passionate or excited about – 

• New team member? Get them to write up a 250 word profile about themselves and their professional background
• New product launching at the end of the month? Write 200 words about why it’s the greatest darn thing in your entire collection
• Working with a new client? Ask them for a sentence about how wonderful it is to be working with you and publish it on your site with a picture and their logo (first gaining  permission from the client!), and work that into your social media schedule for the week

Find 1.5 hours just once a month to write and design a smart little email to your email marketing list, promoting your products or services – MailChimp is free (up to a certain level of usage) and has a range of drag & drop templates to choose from that make designing & writing an effective email pretty easy! 

I cannot stress enough that [one of] the key[s] to digital marketing is consistency. 

And the key to being consistent is doing little and often – making small, manageable changes to your routine; chipping away every day or every week; working marketing into your daily or weekly routine. 

And, if you don’t have time to take on all of the suggestions above, pick the one that feels the most manageable to you and run with it. 

I promise you, you will start to see a difference. 

And, of course, if you do need any support with your content marketing, digital marketing or SEO, please contact me.