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Prioritizing Your Marketing Choices

By Chris Makell

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 30Aug2011 Word count: 710 Viewed: 156 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

One of the toughest challenges for entrepreneurs is prioritizing their day and focusing their time.

And one of the reasons for this is because it's like a buffet! So many things to choose from and we want to dive into it all!

Well, just like a buffet, if we pile too much on our plates, some items will get cold before we can get to them, some items will melt into others and some will lose their pure "flavor" by being so close to stronger seasonings.

If you want to enjoy the bounty that a buffet provides you want to "sample" before you fill your plate. This way you can dive deeply into a pan of tasty dishes that will fill and satisfy you.

Now that you're sufficiently hungry, let's talk about how this relates to your business.

When you have the bounty of tools, tactics, resources and strategies from which to choose to grow your business, how in the world do you decide which to choose. And once chosen, how do you prioritize how to include it in your already full agenda or "to do" list?

My clients, and myself at times, go back and forth with how to prioritize the bounty we're presented with every single day. As an example, do we focus on networking - offline or online. In either case, where's the best place to spend our expensive time and dollar? Why would we want to use this one strategy over any other?

Next, do we invest in newsletters, audio or video for our communications vehicles? Are more people interested in reading, listening or seeing what we have to offer?

You see, same buffet of choices. What's a busy, hungry entrepreneur to do?

My recommendation has always been and continues to be similar to that approach to a buffet filled with lots of different foods to try. And that is to "sample" those different approaches. You want to put a couple on your schedule to see what response you receive from prospects and potential ideal clients.

You may find that in your profitable market, your prospects read and highlight things of interest to them. Or perhaps they're on the road more often and would enjoy audio messages from you. Then there are those who prefer to "see" what you have to offer.

Since there are so many ways to see which of your dishes deeply fills and satisfies. Here are just a few to get you started:

- You can measure where your traffic comes from - Google Analytics

- Run a test to see how often your email messages are opened

- Look at how many downloads there are of your articles

- Review how many comments or views there are of you videos on YouTube.

Now you have several ways to determine who is "sampling" and who is going back for seconds. And that, my friends is one of the best ways to determine how to prioritize your time and day, and where you want to put your focus.

We are often blinded by the latest and greatest tools, tactics, etc., but why not pursue excellence where we know our prospects and clients get their enjoyment and fill their plates?

Just to give you a quick example close to home. I observed ezine authors use a new strategy to drive traffic to their blog, so I decided to try it too. I would put a couple of paragraphs of my article in the ezine and direct readers to my blog to read the entire article online and comment.

So what happened? My open rates for my newsletter plummeted! Fewer people were reading it. When I returned to posting the full article, open rates went up, as did new subscribers! However, without the test, I wouldn't know the buffet choices of my readers!

Now you have some examples and strategies to help you approach and prioritize the buffet of marketing choices in front of you as a busy entrepreneur. Choose wisely.

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