How to market your business in two hours a week

There is always something a little more urgent, such as a client deadline, an invoice to chase or a fire that needs putting out.

In contrast, marketing rarely feels urgent. It can also feel like a monumental task that you can never quite get started on. “I’ll get to it once things calm down,” you say to yourself. But that rarely happens.

I understand the dilemma completely. As someone who has spent more than a decade helping businesses grow, and who runs one of my own at Edward & James, I know exactly how easily a whole month can slip by without a single post, email or piece of outreach going out of the door.

And the biggest problem is, by the time you finally get around to marketing and recognise the need for it, you may not have done anything for six months and your pipeline has dried up.

What I am going to teach you is how to stay on top of things with just an hour or two every week, so that you do not get to that point.

Here is the good news. You do not need a marketing department, a generous budget or endless free afternoons to keep your marketing ticking over. You just need two focused hours a week and a system that makes those hours count.

Consistency beats intensity

The biggest myth I encounter in small business marketing is that it takes a lot of time and effort. It does not. What it takes is a little time, applied consistently over a long period.

Consistency is the key.

The founders I see winning at marketing are rarely the ones doing the most. They are the ones doing a modest amount, week in and week out, without dropping off.

A flurry of five posts in a single week, followed by three months of silence, achieves almost nothing. Two posts a week, every week, for a year builds an audience, a reputation and a steady trickle of enquiries.

So before we talk about what to do with your two hours, make peace with this: the goal is not to do marketing brilliantly. The goal is to do it reliably.

Reliable and modest will beat brilliant and sporadic. Every single time.

Do your thinking once a month, not once a day

The single biggest time drain in marketing is not the execution itself, rather it is the deciding.

Sitting down at your laptop every morning to work out what on earth to post is exhausting, and if you’re not feeling particularly inspired (totally normal, by the way), then you will hit a dead end and by all probabilities; give up.

The solution is to batch. Once a month, block out a couple of hours and do all your thinking in one sitting and make sure you schedule this session somewhere inspiring: booking the boardroom for a couple of hours is not going to get your neurons firing. Head to a café and order a bite to eat, go to the park and record voice notes, go to a bar and order a glass of wine; whatever gets you feeling creative and in that session you decide your themes for the month, draft your content in bulk and line it up ready to go.

Most businesses can build everything around three or four simple themes.

For a professional services firm that might be something you want to be known for, a common client question you can answer, a bit of proof that you are good at what you do, and something that shows the human behind the business.

Rotate through those themes and you will never stare at a blank page again.

Your weekly two hours, broken down

With the thinking already done, the weekly work becomes a simple, repeatable checklist. Here is a rhythm that works for most owners.

First 30 minutes: publish and engage. Post the content you prepared in your monthly session. Then spend the rest of the slot being a good citizen. Reply to any comments you have had and leave a few thoughtful comments on other people’s posts. Social media works best when you’re social, remember that it’s a two-way street.

Next 30 minutes: one piece of direct outreach. This is the highest value half hour of your week, but unfortunately the one people don’t like to do. Message a former client to see how they are getting on. Follow up with a prospect who went quiet. Reconnect with an old contact. One genuine, personal message a week can add up to fifty warm conversations a year.

Next 30 minutes: build one asset. Rotate through the jobs that make everything else easier. One week you might ask a happy client for a testimonial. The next you might tidy a page on your website, write a short email to your list or turn a recent project into a mini case study. That way, you are chipping away at the foundations a little at a time.

Final 30 minutes: glance at the numbers and capture ideas. You do not need a full reporting suite for this. A quick look at what got a response, what fell flat and where your enquiries came from is plenty. Note anything worth repeating and jot down ideas for next month’s batch. If you want to know which numbers are actually worth your attention, check out my previous article, here.

What I would recommend is trying my previous tip of using a Pomodoro Timer and if you can’t block out two hours in one day, just do 25 minutes or so each morning, 3 or 4 times a week and make your way through each task.

What to ignore

Half of marketing in two hours a week is knowing what to leave out. So here is your permission to drop the things that quietly eat your time and give very little back.

Ignore the pressure to be everywhere

It’s always so tempting to be on every social media channel, in every newsletter and every advertising medium but you need to concentrate on showing up where your buyers actually spend their time. For example, if you’re trying to target founders in the tech industry, you’re not going to find them on TikTok.

Once you’ve found your ideal channel, stick to it, you can add other channels to your marketing mix at a later date: one channel done well will always beat five channels done badly.

Ignore vanity metrics

Follower counts and likes feel good but rarely pay the bills. Enquiries, conversations and clients are what matter. An old fashioned spreadsheet recording this is all you need in the early days.

Ignore the big rebuild

So many founders convince themselves they cannot market until the logo is redesigned, the website is rebuilt or the brand is perfect. It is almost always avoidance dressed up as diligence.

Talk to people first and get the ball rolling, you can polish things later.

Ignore the shiny new format

Starting a podcast or a YouTube channel in your first year of doing this is a fast route to burnout. Get the simple two hours working first and you can always add more once the habit is bedded in.

Published beats polished, every single time. A steady, imperfect marketing habit will do more for your business than the perfect campaign you never quite launch.

The takeaway

Marketing often fails because it is treated as a big, occasional project rather than a small, regular habit.

Shrink it down and it becomes something you can actually sustain over a long period, which is where you’ll start to see the real rewards of your marketing efforts.

As you go to reclaim your two hours, keep these three things in mind:

• Consistency beats intensity. A little every week wins.
• Do your thinking once a month so your weekly work is light.
• Knowing what to ignore is as valuable as knowing what to do.

The first best time to build this habit was the day you started your business. The next best time is this week.

James Le Gallez (main picture) is the founder and chief marketing officer of Edward & James, a qualified marketing consultancy that helps professional services providers make confident decisions, execute effectively and grow with intent.

Working across finance, legal services and beyond, Edward & James helps professional services businesses get to the strategic heart of their work, whether they are in the first week of running their company or the thousandth.