Posted by
Paul Wackell – Imagine Web Designs
Principal Website Designer – Marketing Consultant
Let’s face it, we’ve all done it before though we may not want to admit it. For whatever reason, it’s a beautiful morning, a lousy morning, you stayed out too late, you had too much to drink, too much to eat or just plain too much. You just don’t want to get out of bed in the morning. The blare of the alarm when it first goes off is like a dagger in your mind stabbing you back into the real world and all the consequences that brings with it! You blurt out a couple of expletives, contemplate throwing the alarm clock across the room with all the force of a Randy Johnson fastball, but you realize that would take too much effort so you settle for slamming the snooze alarm button.
Nine minutes later the blaring is back and with it the anger “Leave me alone! I don’t want to get out of bed!!” But all you have the energy to do again is hit the snooze button. Nine minutes later, the same thing but each time you are little less angry, you hit the snooze button with a bit more ease, you barely wake up until finally, in a robotic trance you hit the snooze alarm without even waking up.
When you do finally snap into consciousness several hours have passed! You’ve wasted a chunk of the day in a daze, accomplished nothing and in the end didn’t even get the real rest you were hoping for when you first wanted to kill your alarm.
For many small business owners, as sleep goes, so goes their marketing programs. First of all if they even have a formal marketing plan, online and offline, it likely hasn’t been touched in quite a long time. Marketing can be overwhelming, often times its easier to hit the snooze button and promise yourself you’ll get to it later, and then just go about doing what you’ve always done.
When business is good you hit the snooze button on the marketing alarm clock as if you didn’t even wake up. It’s easy, the money is rolling in, you’ve already forgotten the last time business was tough and you delude yourself into believing the good times will keep on rolling! Sleep the sleep of the delusional! Lie to yourself! Rationalize!
When the economy tanks, and it will, when your business slows down, and it will, when the money stops rolling in, and it will, suddenly the marketing alarm is blaring, your pis*&ed off and you want to go all Randy Johnson on the alarm, the realization hits you that its your fault for not keeping marketing front and center at all times. So are you going to throw yourself against the wall? Are you going to hit the snooze alarm again?
Don’t! Marketing must be part of your daily thought process when you are running your business! Every day you should ask yourself, what have I done today to generate new business! What have I done that will lead to new prospects? What have I learned that would be beneficial for my customers that I could add to my blog or to my website. Enjoy the good times, plan for the bad times and when the marketing alarm clock goes off each morning, for God’s sake get out of bed and have at it!
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