Make Time for Your Architecture Marketing in 5 Easy Steps
Have you heard of 90-day sprints? If not, it's a method of focusing on only one thing at a time for a duration of either 2 or 4 weeks at a time. Forget marketing multitasking, that will only help you continue spinning your wheels and getting nowhere fast. If you want to stop putting your marketing on the back burner when things get busy and start seeing consistent results (it only comes from the consistent effort!), then break your year into 90-day goals and only focus on doing the things that will meet those goals. Put blinders on if you need to...whatever it takes!
5 Easy Steps to Architecture Marketing Results:
Make a list of all the things you want to achieve this year for your firm. Just jot them down in a stream of consciousness style; don't think too hard about it. For larger goals, you'll break them down into smaller tasks later.
Run each item on your list from step 1 through 8 specific criteria:
Is it easy to achieve with what you currently have on hand?
What's the cost investment if any?
How long will it take?
Do you have what you need to complete this?
Will you need to learn new skills to complete this?
Do you have people on your team to make this happen?
Will it make you money while you work on other things?
What's the maximum potential of this project (either financially or impact)?
Take the top 6 things that pass the criteria test in step 2 and list them in order of priority.
Divide up your calendar for the next 3 months into blocks of 2 weeks or 4 weeks. These represent your "sprints". Assign each of your top 6 items to a "sprint" on your calendar. For bigger projects that will need a 4-week sprint, you'll find that all 6 of your items will not fit into the 90-day time frame. This is fine.
Treat these "sprints" as if they are your client projects; i.e. prioritize them! For each "sprint" you are only to focus your marketing efforts on that one thing. So if for one 2 week period you want to reach out to prospects on Linkedin, that's all you're going to do for that time. If for a 4-week sprint you want to create a stockpile of draft blog posts or newsletters, then that is all you're going to work on for that time period.
If you have admin staff, especially an office manager, then you should delegate the actual work of each sprint to them and you can focus on just managing the process. If you’re solo or a partnership without admin staff, then you’ll need to commit to adding these sprints to your calendar and actually doing the work. Another option is to find temporary or part-time help from a website like UpWork or Hubstaff Talent.
What do you do if you don’t have people in-house with the skillset to accomplish your marketing goals? Hire a marketer or marketing company to take this off your plate, of course! If you need marketing help or are simply looking for some marketing advice, book your free Clarity Call with me to get your questions answered.