How many times have we finished our billable work or a big client’s project and looked up from the hard grind and said, “Oh, no! I have run out of work.” I’ve done it many times throughout many different types of businesses.
However, the solution to this opportunity is to not treat marketing as the background project that I only do when I run out of paying work. My dad calls it “the hills and valleys” and say something like “son, you want to raise up the valleys, that is the time when you are low on billable work, and lower the high mountain tops, that is when you have so much work you are covered up.” The much more sustainable and balanced approach is to be constantly marketing a little every day. Make it a habit to do something for marketing every single day.
There is a constant balance that must take place in order to succeed as a biller or as an entrepreneur. There is a guy who every time I ask him about producing more marketing content, his first and regularly played response is “I have billable work on my plate. Do you want me to differ?”
This little comment is saying, “You tell me what you want me to do. I can do this stuff that brings in money, or I can go over hear and write you a blog that doesn’t bring any money. I have work that is paying me, so I need to go and do that work now.” Yes, of course we want you to go and do that work, but the problem is that when that work runs out, and you are in the low valley of workload, it is then marketing out of desperation and necessity.
It takes on average 5-6 weeks from the time that the blog or content is published and read to the time when work comes in the door from it. So, there is a steady need to trickle market and produce content regularly. It is really hard and frustrating when that person comes to me and says something like “Hey Matt, my billings are down and I need some cases. I’m out of work completely.” That is a real rough spot to pull someone out of. Its like pulling someone out of the ditch after they have bottomed out.
Why don’t you help me, help you!? Stop responding and treating marketing like something that is only done when you have no more work. Start incorporting it into your daily project list so that you don’t starve from work and also don’t have so much you can’t keep up.
As a newer person to the industry, it is really important to not stop getting his name out there. Yes, he has work currently, but everyone needs to realize that you cannot wait until you are out of work to start marketing. It is super important that we carve out time to constantly market along the way.
