Sporadic Marketing Syndrome

Sporadic Marketing And How To Avoid It

Sporadic Marketing Syndrome is a term that I coined recently. An estimated 95% of small business owners suffer from this. Mainly because many of them lack consistency and tend to dip in and out of marketing activities.

Disadvantages Of Sporadic Marketing?

Sporadic marketing causes disadvantages for you and your business. Firstly, it makes it difficult to monitor and measure marketing success. Moreover, it causes fluctuations in sales and profits. Largely because, ultimately, marketing leads to future sales, so you need to be marketing with consistency. Marketing also builds trust amongst customers and creates brand awareness, so you need to maintain your presence.

Having gaps and pulling back on consistent marketing reduces the chances of marketing success.?Worst still, not only can sporadic marketing become psychologically challenging for many small business owners, but it can also negatively impact the perception of your brand, credibility and trust. Most small business owners are under enough pressure running their businesses without worrying about inconsistent marketing.

The good news is that there a few measures that businesses can take to ease they pain and reduce the torment of Sporadic Marketing Syndrome.

Planning

Planning isn't a buzz word; it's something that all business owners ought to do. There’s often a temptation, when it comes to marketing, to go straight to marketing communications and promotions, without having a marketing strategy or plan in place.?It’s a big mistake to skip the planning phase.?Don't do it!

As well as being the foundation of a successful business, it’s essential to managing marketing.?In all my years in business, I’ve never had a single client that already had a marketing strategy or plan in place before working with me.?So, don't think you're the only one because you're not.

Don't worry about the need for long-term business and marketing planning either. I’m an advocate of short-term planning, and prefer my marketing mentoring clients to have 90 day planning cycles. I'd highly recommend this option. Not only is it easier to formulate plans, it means that you can easily monitor and review your marketing activities. Furthermore, it gives you structure but maintains an agile approach, so that you can quickly and easily make changes when necessary.

Chunking

Putting together 90 day goals and breaking them down into small achievable chunks will help massively because it will provide focus, purpose, clarity, and direction. I see the relief on my clients faces when we do this for the first time. Breaking things down even further into monthly and weekly plans not only alleviates pressure, because it immediately makes marketing less overwhelming, it also leads to effective scheduling.

Scheduling

With ever increasing demands on our time and rapidly changing environments, scheduling works a treat when making time for marketing.??My advice is put your marketing time in your diary.??Whether you're doing your marketing activities yourself, a member of your team is, or you're outsourcing, marketing needs actioning and managing. Give it the time it needs.

Schedule time to do all the necessary activities in calendars or diaries.??Importantly, leave it there.?There may be a temptation to reschedule activities, but don’t.??Unless there is a major catastrophe, once scheduled, it should not be moved.?Taking action is what gets results.?All the planning in the world is futile without action and allocating time to create action is imperative to marketing success.

Time Blocking

Time Blocking can make the scheduling of marketing activities even easier.?Rather than just scheduling generic marketing time, for example, allocate time for individual tasks.?Schedule each individual task separately.?Assign realistic timeframes to each task and aim to stick to those allotted timeframes.?

It’s so easy, especially with things like social media, to get engrossed and side tracked.?This often leads to not having enough time to complete a task or can lead us to thinking that certain tasks take longer than they do.??When using Time Blocking, set reminders on your phone or smart devices. Set a halfway point and another for full time. Not only will help keep you on schedule, but it will also be a great way to ascertain exactly how long tasks actually take. In turn, this will help with future scheduling.

Start With The Worst Task First

It’s not surprising that most people start with their favourite tasks first.?If you enjoy something there’s bound to be a temptation to priorities it.

Try this approach instead! Start with the worst task first. You know, the task that you're not looking forward to doing. ?Do that one first!??Firstly, it makes certain that the task gets done.?Secondly, as you end with your most preferred tasks, your marketing activities will have a more positive association. In turn, this will avoid the temptation to reschedule future marketing activities. Author, Brian Tracy MBA , refers to this approach as 'Eat That frog'.

The Ripple Effect

The ripple effect of small changes can massively impact future business performance and marketing successes.?Moreover, making these small changes and creating new habits could result in a huge psychological shift, which could lead to a strong desire to be consistent with marketing.?Most importantly, these easy to implement measures will help avoid Sporadic Marketing Syndrome. Massive fluctuations in sales revenue, cashflow and profits could be a thing of the past.

Final Thoughts

I hope you've found this article useful. I'm more than happy to make new connections here on LinkedIn. As you visit my profile, click the three dots and connect, rather than follow me. ?Let's network!

If you think my online marketing mentoring service could help you, please feel free to contact me.