How Much Time Should You Spend Marketing Your PI Business?

Marketing is a big part of any business especially when you are just starting out. It would be nice if customers would start flooding in when you hang your sign but that is not going to be the case. so, how much time should you spend marketing your Private Investigation business? The answer may surprise you.

"It sells itself"

How many times have you heard that, especially from car salesmen? Nothing sells itself. If that were true, there would be no need for marketing. One word would get things rolling.

You'll need to manage a bit more than that. Time management is the key with marketing. Just like other duties that a new business requires, it can take over your day and leave you with very little time to meet the needs of your clients. After all, without paying clients, you can't pay your staff or pay for advertising.

Ask any professional, online or offline, and they will all have a different answer. Here are some marketing tips that can assist you with finding the magic number.

How Much Time should a PI spend on Marketing?

Get the ball rolling - In the beginning, you'll probably spend the majority of your time setting up and implementing marketing strategies. Why? You need clients. They don't know that you exist if they can't find you. Before your "grand opening" do public service announcements (PSAs) on the radio. Submit a press release to the local newspaper. If you are launching your website concurrently, use press release services to drive traffic to your site for the big launch day. You need to decide what type of marketing to use. Learn about direct response marketing - it is much more cost effective than brand marketing.

Create a plan of attack - Create a strategy that will return the most results for the least amount of time and money. There are free online marketing strategies that you can implement but it takes time to get them going. For instance, you can start a PI niche blog for free, but you will need content for viewers to read. The question then becomes - how do I drive traffic to my website? Should you use pay per click online ads, yellow pages ads or just ads in community newspaper. Offline, create your logo and tagline and then have business cards, brochures, freebie items, letterhead and etc. printed up and ready for distribution. If you are going after attorneys, consider direct mail campaign. This is much more cost effective than PPC. You have to match your advertising to your target market.

What maintenance is needed? - Once you set up a blog, create social media profiles, mail brochures and the like, what sort of upkeep is necessary to keep it going? Marketing can be the most profitable business activity you spend time on. An hour of marketing activity can often return 10 times what you receive from an investigation on an hourly basis. The key is consistently marketing and knowing the return on investment for your marketing expenses. If you upload new content weekly, schedule a day to do that. Once a week, check in with potential clients through email - or better yet, set up an auto-responder so that your prospects are receiving a drip email campaign from you. For businesses, having direct mail campaigns set up is better. . For social media and blogs, check in once a day to answer questions or to post a new link. If these activities take too much time, consider outsourcing your marketing

There is not a set amount of time for marketing. It depends on your return on investment. At first you will be engrossed with marketing. After you have set up systems that are bringing in a return, it is a matter of maintaining them on a daily or weekly basis. If a marketing activity is returning 5 or 10 times the cost, there is really no limit to how much time or money you should spend on it - just a matter of how fast you want to grow!

Comments? Questions? Email Here

© HowtoAdvice.com

How to Advice .com