Finding the Time to Run a Marketing Campaign for a One-Person Business

You don’t have a team, but you have a product, service, idea, or brand that you need to get to a lot of people. Great. You are in the right place. They key is to know that your energy, time, and creativity are limited resources that you must replenish each day to keep the campaign going. Too often, folks start out strong and putter out only a week or so later once they realize they’ve bitten off more than they can chew. This is a guide to avoid burnout, and instead make a marketing schedule that is continuous and meaningful.

Define Your Mission

Before you start, you have to figure out why you are marketing. This is a big question that you should spend a considerable amount of time and research on. Are you creating a feeling? Educating an audience? Selling a product? Usually the answer boils down to a statement like “I’m empowering my audience to make better art” or “I am informing my audience about ways they can create positive change in their local governments”. Once you define your mission, it becomes a lot easier to pick the right channels for spreading the word.

Consciously Observe How You Spend Your Time

Since you are going to be creating and posting content by yourself, it is really important to know when you have the capacity to do so. You don’t want your campaign to rule your life. Instead, you want to be in control of how much time you spend on your campaign.

From when you wake up to when you go to sleep, pay attention to the parts of your day when you have an open moment. When do you casually browse through the internet? When are you bored? When are you motivated? When do you read? Take note of your findings in a journal, and circle the hour long blocks in your day that you think you can devote to media production.

For example, I usually show up to my job thirty minutes early. So, I post up at a cafe and write in my journal. I realized that this thirty minute window is perfect for writing blogs, so now this is when I draft up ideas, do research, and put together posts. Further, I often have to wait fifteen minutes for my bus after work each day. Around this time, I can write notes for another project I am working on.

Find the gaps in your day that occur regularly, and utilize them. If we used the time we spent scrolling through Facebook on something else, we would get hours of extra work done.

Tailor Your Content Production to Match the Time Available

So, now you know you have an hour here, fifteen minutes there, and maybe a good four hours on the weekend. Figure out what kind of content you can make in this time that aligns with your clearly defined mission. If you’re marketing your baking expertise and have ten minute breaks at your day job, maybe start a Twitter to share baking info, jokes, and tips. For that four hour window, maybe you can make a fully fledged how-to video for a certain recipe.

Most people will make the idea then try to fit it into their schedule. This is hard if you’re a busy person (since you are running a business, you probably are extremely busy). By starting with the time blocks first, you already increase the likelihood that you will make the right media in a consistent and reliable manner.

Consistency is Your Ally

Consistency draws attention and trust, which are possibly the two most important rewards of a good marketing campaign. By harnessing your day as it already exists and engineering your media production to fit established routines, your process will be as consistent as your workweek. Which is key. Of course, you will not get it right the first time. The fact that you’re reading this article means you have probably tried and failed in the past. I’m in the same boat as you. But every iteration of a new strategy helps us get better at refining the process.

This means that consistency goes beyond just following through with your plan. It means being consistent with trying over and over again with tweaks that improve your approach. And this is the lesson that is going to pay dividends when taken to heart. So many of my peers are defeated by a problem that is in their own head instead of on their plate, and if you can find a way to continue adjusting, tweaking, and getting better, you are well positioned to find your niche of success.