Running your own small business or marketing department often means working long hours. Wouldn’t you like to cut back this summer, ease up a little, maybe take a few Friday afternoons off or get away on vacation? How can you do this and still keep – or build – marketing momentum?

You know that you could expand your business if your marketing was more effective, but you barely have time to keep up with your present workload, much less take on a whole new set of business marketing tasks.

How can you take your small business to the next level and work less?

1.Plan To Get More Done With Less Effort
Learn how to be more effective and efficient in marketing and managing your business. Start by taking time each week to assess your marketing plan to prioritize your next steps.

Take out your calendar and block out an hour once a week, preferably first thing in the morning, when you’ll give yourself a mental vacation from meetings, answering the phone, and email. Use this time to evaluate your existing marketing efforts.

Identify what to do more of, what to change and where to get help.
– What’s working and what isn’t?

– Where are you getting the best results?

– Which keywords are attracting the most prospects?

– Which marketing messages?

– What sequence of information results in the highest conversion rates?

– What follow-up strategy?
Etc.

2. Get More Attention With Less Effort
A common misconception is that small business marketing success is a result of plain old persistence. Most people think that using the same type of marketing message and advertising that everyone else uses will build their “brand” or grow their business.

Is using the same approach your competitors use helping you get all the attention you want for your business? Probably not.

Your marketing message may need a vacation, or even early retirement. Replace it with a message that clearly and succinctly explains how you help your clients. Prospects respond when you speak to their needs.

On average, my clients report that composing and using a marketing message like this increases the response rate to their marketing by 400 percent. That’s 4 times as many leads generated with the same effort.

Discover how to explain what you do and get a better response to your marketing >>

3. Generate More Qualified Leads and Sales with Less Effort
Getting attention is the first step in marketing; getting qualified prospects the second. You want more prospects so you can convert them to clients and increase sales, but you don’t have time to make more calls or write more emails or letters. But you can get more people to contact you and buy from you each month and reduce your long-term marketing costs.

Establish systems for prompting prospects to contact you. Then automate every function of your marketing you can.

I use a simple system of articles and newsletters to generate interest and stay in touch with prospects. To handle the 40-50 or more people a day who contact me, I have an automated response system to follow up with each of them.For people interested in my services, I have yet another system I use to determine the best follow up response.

Discover how to generate more sales with less selling >>

I leverage the web, related software and a set of proven systems to manage my marketing and my sales The result is that I can manage a continually growing enterprise with less effort. In the last 12 months, this marketing strategy has helped more than triple the number of visitors to my web site.

You can do the same by:
• Letting prospects know how you can help them get what they want,

• Using your web site to prompt at least 10 to 20% of site visitors to contact you,

• Following up each inquiry with a personalized automated response,

• Building your in-house list of prospects,

• Regularly demonstrating your expertise and the value of your services to your growing list of prospects,

• Doing all of the above using systems and automating repetitive functions.

Discover how to generate more leads and sales with your web site even when you’re on vacation >>

You deserve some R and R this summer – you can get it and still grow your small business with the above 3 strategies. Start by setting the time aside, making a marketing plan and a vacation plan so you can enjoy your summer and steadily increasing revenue.