We’ve been asked ‘How much time should I be spending on marketing within my product-based business?’, so many times, but it’s a tricky question to answer because it depends on so many factors, such as the size of your business, the type of products you sell, the time you actually have and more.
However, in this blog we’ll attempt to break the question down, so you know how best to organise your workload and exactly how much time you should be spending on marketing, and specifically social media in terms of marketing.
What does ‘marketing’ include?
Firstly, let’s clarify what we mean by ‘marketing’.
Marketing refers to any actions that a business takes, to attract an audience to your products or services. In this day and age, social media is a primary way of doing this, but marketing also includes your email list, any work you do on your website, and so on.
The more you market your business, the better.
You can make a million great products, but if your customers don’t know your products exist, they can’t buy them, therefore marketing is essential.
Marketing i.e. curating you email mailings and newsletters, social media, and being physically present, is what you should be what you spend the majority of your time working on the business on. Creating the products themselves is only a small portion of what your business is about. So, even if you have a product based business, the majority of your time working on your business should be spent on marketing those products / your biz!
Why is Social Media so important?
When we say ‘social media’, we’re including your basic Facebook, Instagram and TikTok in this, but platforms like Pinterest and even X (formerly Twitter), AND Instagram Threads all count too!
Click here to work out which social media platforms you should be using.
Social media is more of a marketing tool than it is a revenue stream. You need to put your products in front of customers and find relatable content that connects with them, so they want to buy from you.
Because Instagram is essentially like a magazine, where users can flick through images and videos of your product / business, and is a platform attracting all audience demographics (to a further extent than other social media platforms), we highly recommend using at least Instagram for marketing your business.
So, how much time should I be spending on marketing within my product-based business?
We’d generally advise that 75-90% of your time working on your business should be spent on marketing.
Let’s take 75% as a baseline example. If you work on your business for 40 hours a week, then 25% of that time should be spent making your products (i.e. 10 hours), and the remaining 75% (i.e. the other 30 hours) should be spent doing ‘marketing’.
You can adjust this percentage depending on how much time you spend making your products, how much time you actually devote to working on your business, and how much you see your marketing efforts pay off.
This percentage does cover all elements of marketing, so divide that time between collecting email addresses, curating your email newsletters, social media content creation, engagement and so on, and all your other forms of marketing. There’s always more than you think!
Remember, consistency is key with all forms of social media marketing, so stick at it, keep watching, keep learning and stay curious, and it will pay off eventually!
“How much time should I be spending on marketing within my product-based business?” is also available in a 2-minute YouTube video. To watch it, click here.