Efficiency is your greatest marketing secret
by Denis A. Baldwin

When it comes to marketing in a small business, you don't often have the time or resources to be a full time marketing person. In companies of all sizes, you tend to live beyond your title. In small businesses, this is even more true.

By my title, I'm the marketing director. During daily operations, I find myself doing project development, sales, website design, dealing with vendors.. pretty much everything it takes to keep a business running. I bet you're much the same.

That said, the greatest marketing secret I can offer to you is to streamline your operations to make them as efficient as possible. This gives you more time to do marketing and less energy handling the hassles that seem to consume your time.

Here's a few hints to keep you moving on the right path:

• Minimize input. If you've got one system to take orders, one to keep track of your customers, one to handle your vendors and one to handle your promotions, you've got three too many systems. Do what you can to buy a CRM System and an accounting system that work together. This will eliminate keying in data multiple times and cutting down on efficiencies.
• Only stock what you need. This goes hand in hand with the idea of "Just In Time" business operations. If you anticipate selling 1000 widgets in the next month because you've sold 1000 widgets for the last 6 months in a row, order that 1000 widgets and keep them on hand. Unless there's a major advantage to ordering 5000 widgets, don't do it. Regardless of the space you have, you'll find a way to fill it with inventory if you don't keep a tight control on supply and demand.
• Trim the fat from your operations by cross-training and removing unnecessary personnel. How many jobs can any one of your employees do? Perhaps you've got an accountant with some downtime that is also good at sales. Perhaps you've got a production manager who is also a pretty good handyman. It's often easier to retain good employees if you pay them for the jobs they will be doing (and others they may grow into) as opposed to hiring extra bodies.
• Freelancers can fill gaps as needed. This is especially true of businesses that are approaching new ventures or are growing in unplanned ways. Hire a freelancer to work on a per project basis. While they may be more expensive than hourly employees, they can be put on projects as they come up and they can fill gaps in your resources while you adjust the way your business runs. Also, letting a freelancer go is less of a liability than letting a regular employee go.
• Stay focused on your mission statement. I can't tell you how many businesses I've seen that sell widgets, but also sell wonjets, whojunts and whatzoos, just because someone asked them to do that one time. Stay focused on what has been proven to work and don't chase after every bit of business that might, possibly, maybe, sorta, kinda fits what you do. It's a waste of resources and will only work to disenchant both you and your employees, as well as your customer base. Instead of seeing an expert and an accomplished niche marketer, the customers will see a jack of all trades and a master of none.
• Cut down on internal waste. This can go for any number of things, including eliminating scrap, cutting down energy waste, working to recycle or reuse components or cutting processes that don't help you in the end.
• Re-evaluate your goals every 3 months. I find it's helpful to make an excel sheet of everything you hope to accomplish in the next quarter, half year, year and 5 years. Put a reasonable deadline and timetable on these and then decide which are most important. I bet this new perspective really helps sort out the hodgepodge from the winners.