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TL;DR: Tight budgets and busy schedules are not an excuse to cut marketing. If you do, here are 4 things that happen when you stop marketing.
This has been a really weird year for content marketing. I’ve had clients double down on marketing and other clients pull back. One has nearly stopped marketing.
I haven’t been immune to the weirdness. I was so slammed for most of this year I was scrambling to keep up with my blogging, email marketing, and LinkedIn marketing. And then things slowed down in August. And they’re still slow.
Though I didn’t stop marketing, you know what I did stop? Proactive business development.
You need both – marketing and business development – if you want to continually add new clients to your list.
What’s the difference between marketing and business development?
Marketing builds relationships. It’s the equivalent of staring into each other’s eyes from across the room and eventually progressing to holding hands.
Business development picks up at the holding hands stage. If all goes well, you end up with a beautiful relationship (a closed sale).
Both marketing and business development are an investment in your company’s future. Yes, they are expenses, but they generate compounded interest, just like your retirement account.
And like I said above, you need both.
Back in 2015 I wrote a blog post about what happens when you stop marketing. This is an update to that blog post.
Here is what happens when you stop marketing
Stop marketing, and you’ll no longer be top of mind among prospects
I don’t know about you, but when a prospect needs my services, I want them to think about me first.
If you want sometime to immediately think of your name when they’re ready to buy, you need to be in front of them on a regular basis. Not physically in front of them, though that would be helpful. You just need to constantly remind them that you’re still here.
Your competitors are! They are likely investing a lot of time and money in blogging, email marketing, and social media marketing. Are they also writing and sharing definitive guides and white papers and workbooks? What about holding online workshops and speaking at conferences?
It they are out there, and you’re not, guess whose name your prospects are going to remember (or find in an online or generative AI search)?
Not yours.
People may wonder if your company is in trouble
Imagine this scenario:
Friends have been raving about a cute coffee shop a few towns away. For months, you’ve heard that their coffee is divine, the breakfast burritos are the best in town, and the vibe is cozy and chill.
You rarely head in that direction, but one day you do. You remember you need to stop at the coffee shop.
The parking lot is littered with trash, the coffee tastes burnt, and a mouse runs over your foot while you’re trying to relax on a couch that smells funky.
Your impression: This coffee shop is depressing and probably hanging on by a financial thread.
Now imagine hearing about an accounting firm from a few people in your network. You check out their website. It’s really slow to load. You pop over to their blog. It hasn’t been updated in two and half years.
You see icons for LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram. YouTube has one video from five years ago. LinkedIn is updated sporadically. Instagram has also been neglected for two and a half years.
If this firm is not investing in marketing, does that mean they don’t need new clients? Are they having cash flow issues? And what else are they skimping on?
I don’t think that’s the kind of impression any business wants to leave.
Word of mouth will slow way down
I get a lot of my clients from word of mouth, and I bet you do, too. Partners, vendors, and past clients are all excellent sources of word of mouth. So are the people you see face-to-face at networking events.
Like you, they are also busy, and they may from time to time, forget you exist.
It’s not because they don’t like you. They just forget, simple as that.
You need to do everything you can to stay in front of your word-of-mouth network, not just your prospects. They know you and can make intros for you. They can help you skip over the gazing-into-each-other’s-eyes part of marketing and get you to the holding hands part.
You could certainly email and text them to say hi. But that’s time-consuming.
Remember: The beauty of marketing is that you can reach many people at once.
Business development will become harder
If you’re not actively marketing, your pipeline of prospects will get pretty thin. Who are you supposed to have sales calls with at that point?
This is when the panic sets in. You can start reaching out to past clients and prospects, of course. But you don’t know if they need your services right now.
Marketing connects you to the people who need your services now – or soon.
When you stop marketing, you’re inviting a drought. The ground doesn’t dry up, plants don’t die, and animals don’t disappear right away.
It happens slowly, until one day, everything is dead and the birdsong is gone.
That took a dark turn.
What is the bare minimum when it comes to content marketing?
Whether you have a tight budget, busy calendar, or both, here’s what I recommend you focusing on:
One monthly blog post: Pick your topics based on questions you’re asked a lot and optimize them for SEO/GAIO. (GAIO is generative AI optimization – I’ll be writing about it in two weeks.)
Monthly email newsletter: Send out a short monthly newsletter that showcases your recent blog posts. Pull out a blurb or tip, add a read more button, write a great subject line, and you’re done. (Blogging and email marketing are a particularly powerful combo.)
Weekly LinkedIn post: Write one high-quality post each week that shares a story or strategy. And make sure you engage with other people’s posts in your feed!
Related: Think All Marketing Is the Same? Here’s Why That Could Be Hurting Your Results