10 Marketing Tips for Time-Pressed Professionals

In my experience, most professionals realize that "marketing" and business development are really not that hard to understand. There's no magic to them and marketing consultants that try to convince you otherwise are selling you a bill of goods.

So while "marketing" and business development themselves are not necessarily hard, doing them on a consistent basis is. Too many professionals fall into the trap of marketing only when they are not busy. You can't build any momentum this way and you know it. But you've got billable responsibilities and only so many hours in the day. What do you do?

Stacy West Clark has a useful article at Law.com entitled "10 Marketing Tips for Time-Pressed Lawyers." These tips apply to all professionals, not just lawyers. Stacy's main points are:

1. Don't shoot for the moon
2. Calendar marketing as you would a court appearance
3. Every Thursday breakfast or every Thursday lunch, meet with a client or referral source
4. Outsource ministerial marketing tasks to your secretary
5. Mentor a terrific associate so he or she can help you deliver responsive service to the client
6. Make marketing part of something you really like to do so it becomes part of your relaxation time
7. Create fast and easy communication devices to let clients know you are thinking of their business needs and goals
8. Look at where you spend your time
9. Focus your marketing activities on things that have the greatest payoffs
10. Use "downtime" to check-in with clients and referral sources

Read the article for helpful comments on each item. 

The point is that while marketing is not hard, taking the time for marketing activities can be. The easiest way to deal with this is to take small steps -- and take them consistently. I know this is not new advice but I post this because while most of you know what you should do but are currently not doing it (even though you have the best of intentions to, say, start a new development program after your vacation), a little nagging helpful reminder can't hurt.

Hat Tip to Tom Kane at Legal Marketing Blog where I found Stacy's article