Are you looking for marketing tips for small business owners, so you can save time?

I get it. If you’re a small business owner, then your time is precious.

There are clients to meet and projects to complete.

Not to mention, staff to manage, finances to reconcile, and operations to run.

In between all that there’s also the task of marketing your small business.

You may be wondering where you can find the time for “all the things”?

Well, there is a faster way to market your small business.

Yes, it will take some effort in the beginning.

However, once you’ve put the marketing strategies, structures, and systems in place, then marketing your small business will become so much quicker and easier.

Here are my 10 time-saving marketing tips for small business owners:

1. Use copy templates

Copywriting is an essential part of content marketing these days and using copy templates will save you considerable time.

These templates come in a few different formats.

There are copy templates that you can use to help you create content for things like blogs, emails, and social media posts.

There are also copy templates that you can develop for repetitive tasks that occur in your business.

I’ve built several of these templates, including email copy templates for responding to sales enquiries and promotional email templates for marketing my services to my email list subscribers.

What copy templates could you create for your service-based small business?

2. Subscribe to automation tools

Like many others, I was guilty of not investing in automation tools soon enough in some areas of my business.

Yes, it does cost money to use several automation tools, and I know funds can be low when you’re first starting.

However, the time saving over the long term is worth the investment.

There are some free tools out there as well, which are perfect for those who are just getting started.

My two biggest marketing tips for small business owners are to take advantage of the free trials first to see if it is the right tool for you before making a more significant investment.

Also, watch the training videos or webinars to learn how to use the tools you’ve just subscribed to.

I hear time and time again, about small business owners who pay for automation tools, but they don’t use them because they don’t know how.

Avoid this mistake early on and invest the time in educating yourself.

RELATED: 30 Marketing tools every service-based business should know about

Not sure where to start when it comes to marketing your service-based small business? That’s where I can help. Get started by downloading my free Ultimate Marketing Checklist by clicking the button below: 

3. Build marketing systems

Building marketing systems is one of the most important things you can do to save time when it comes to marketing your small business.

You can build systems for any marketing task or process that is repetitive in your business.

Sometimes they are also called marketing workflows.

Mainly it involves writing down the steps that you follow each time that you complete that marketing task.

I have marketing systems in my business for publishing a blog post, creating my social media content, and sending out my weekly email to my list as just a few examples.

I store each of these marketing systems on my own Google Sites intranet.

It makes it very handy to be able to visit one place and quickly find all of my process steps.

Anything that you do more than once in your business can be systemised, and the time savings can be very significant!

4. Structure your content creation process

Do you ever struggle to come up with content ideas for your blog?

Well, structuring your content creation process will go some way to resolving that challenge.

A blog content structure, as an example, would involve identifying 5 – 8 categories for your blog, which are related to your core area of expertise.

As an example, my blog is about small business marketing, and I have categories such as email marketing, website marketing, and content marketing.

The next stage is to then only write about topics which fit into each of those categories.

Rather than feel overwhelmed by all the blog post ideas that you could write about, you’ve made it easier by limiting yourself to only a handful of categories.

Also, by creating this structure, you’ll be creating keyword clusters around the terms which are related to your niche.

These keyword clusters are great for SEO and will help you with your Google ranking.

Not sure where to start when it comes to marketing your service-based small business? That’s where I can help. Get started by downloading my free Ultimate Marketing Checklist by clicking the button below: 

5. Follow a sales script or process to qualify leads

A sales process is often developed over time, once you’ve experimented and worked out what the best way is to convert enquiries to sales.

It’ll save you time over the long term because it will help you improve your enquiry to sales conversion rate.

And you won’t have to spend as much time (or money) on marketing your small business as you’ll not need as many leads to turn over the same amount of sales.

It will also help you to qualify leads better and identify the best prospects for your business quicker.

Significant time can be lost on following up sales leads that will never eventuate in a sale.

However, this time-wasting could be avoided when you have a good understanding of your ideal client and a solid sales script.

6. Set up an email welcome sequence

It used to be quite a time-consuming process to follow up leads manually and nurture your sales prospects.

However, email autoresponders have changed all that.

One of my must-do marketing tips for small business owners is to set up an email welcome sequence for potential clients who join their email list.

You may have a lead magnet PDF or another form of downloadable freebie information that you’re using to attract potential clients.

Whenever a potential client opts-in for this type of information, it’s a sign that they have a pain point or problem that they’re looking to solve.

At this point, they are also a warm or hot lead for your business.

Rather than having to follow up each of these leads and qualify them manually, an automated email welcome sequence can do this for you, saving time.

Not sure where to start when it comes to marketing your service-based small business? That’s where I can help. Get started by downloading my free Ultimate Marketing Checklist by clicking the button below: 

7. Re-purpose long-form content

It can take considerable time to write a blog or produce a podcast or video.

However, when you create this type of long-form content, there are many ways in which you can repurpose it and extend its reach.

One of the fastest and quickest ways to produce a lot of social media content is to take a piece of long-form content and repurpose it by cutting it down into smaller chunks.

Take this blog article I’m writing now as an example.

I could take each of the 10 time-saving marketing tips for small business owners that I have in this post and create ten social media posts.

Each post could be a graphic with the marketing tip; with the caption containing the words, I’ve written under each of the tips.

It’s a substantial timesaving as I don’t have to create more content, but I’m cleverly using the content I’ve already written.

RELATED: How to create an effective content marketing strategy

8. Invest in paid advertising

With content marketing, you can either spend every spare moment you have posting organically and hoping to reach your ideal clients.

Alternatively, you can save yourself the time and use paid advertising that you know will get seen by your target market.

My marketing tips for small business owners who are considering spending money on ads are firstly, to educate yourself on the platform that you’re using and understand how their advertising works.

Secondly, be sure to take advantage of retargeting methods on social media and online.

Retargeting involves placing a tracking pixel or tag on your website to capture the IP address details of those who visit your site.

And then running ads to on social media or Google ads to target those people who have visited your site in the past.

9. Batch-create content

The batch-creation process is a well-known process for saving operational time.

It involves completing tasks in batches, which removes inefficiencies and speeds up the process.

If you’re producing small business tips that you want to share on social media as an example, it will be much faster to sit down and come up with 10 tips at once as opposed to researching and identifying these one at a time.

You could also have a graphics template that you are using for the tips.

It will be much faster to cut and paste the tips into this template in one block of time. Rather than having to find and open the program and create the graphics one at a time.

The other benefit of batch-creating content is that by repeating the task over and over, you get better at it. It’s just like practising something.

So, when you practice your marketing activities, you’ll get better and faster at doing them.

10. Develop a marketing strategy

When you’re first starting in small business, you can try many different marketing activities before you find the one that works best for you.

It can be quite a frustrating process to put all your efforts into a marketing campaign, only to see it generate a few leads, if any, for your business.

However, if you develop a marketing strategy, you’ll be able to save time on working out what marketing activities you should undertake.

RELATED: How to develop a marketing strategy and plan for a service-based business

A marketing strategy will be used to identify your target market, to craft your unique value proposition and service packages, as well as where you are going to communicate your message to reach your ideal clients.

Having a marketing strategy will save time because you won’t be wasting efforts in marketing to people who don’t fit your target market profile.

Also, your messaging will be much more strategic and resonate with your audience better the first time.

Finally, with a solid marketing communications plan that is underpinned by your strategy, you won’t be spending time and money promoting your business on platforms that won’t work well for your business.

Tired of trying to figure out what you’re missing when it comes to finding clients and making sales in your service business?

Break through the barriers that are holding you back with the support of an MBA-qualified Marketing Coach and Business Mentor who will tailor a 1:1 program specifically for you.

BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGH is a 3 or 6-month 1:1 Coaching Program for service-based business owners who want to develop the strategy, systems, and structure they need to find clients and make sales, so they can stop feeling stuck and start gaining massive momentum in their business.

Did you find this post helpful? Please don’t forget to PIN to Pinterest or share on Facebook.