You’re stressed. No time for any extras on your plate. But, you keep seeing ads or articles about how important marketing is. Your top managers or sales staff are complaining that they never see any advertising about the company. You know it’s a key component to business, but you also feel like the time and the money just aren’t there. 

What if you could get started, today, and you just had to spend around 2 minutes in action? 

Can you spare 120 seconds? 

Now, a true marketing campaign plan will take months, if not years, to complete. You’ll need a team by your side to build, execute and analyze the plan for future success. From strategy, to social media management, to photography, to videography, to branded designs, to strategic advertising and the list goes on…these are the sorts of things an agency can take care of for you. If you’re interested, see what it’s like to work with us! 

While you’re deciding on the right marketing person or team to work with, we don’t want you to neglect your marketing potential. Even if all you can give is 120 seconds a day, that’s a better place to start than 0.

You may think marketing is all about advertising what you can offer customers. But, a lot of marketing actually begins with research. You need to understand how your customers think, what problems they’re facing and where they encounter issues when trying to work with your organization. 

Of course to truly do this, it takes a lot more than 120 seconds. Market research can take weeks, months and even years depending on what you’re trying to learn and the budget you’re working with. But, even just engaging in one conversation a week can go a long way in beginning to understand what your customers and employees think of the organization’s past, present and future.

1. Ask your employees one of the following questions: 

1. What do you hear our customers say about us? 

2. What’s one issue you hear our customers complain about? 

3. How did you hear about us before you applied here? 

2. Each time you interact with a customer or potential customer ask them one question below. Be sure to document their answer! The more you ask, the more you’ll begin to learn about what’s important to your customer base. Understanding this piece is fundamental to building a successful marketing strategy. Question examples: 

1. Why did you choose us? 

2. How did you first hear about us? 

3. What’s the problem we help you solve? 

3. Analyze your Facebook Insights. Take at least 1 minute and review this page.  It will show you how well your page has done over the last 28 days. Plus, you can see which posts are doing the best. This helps you know what kind of content your customers like, plus it helps you understand which ads or posts lead to more meaningful sales conversations. 

4. Analyze your Google Analytics. Take 2 minutes and quickly glance over the following: 

1. Page Views: How many visitors to the site did you have this month and what were your top pages? 

2. Source: Where are your customers coming from when they view the website? 

This helps you understand how your website is serving your customer and where they tend to lose interest. 

5. Now, take something you learned from all of your analysis and create one business goal. Did you learn that your customers work with you because you mainly help them solve X? Vow to create 1 post a week that shares stories or information related to the problem/solution. Did you learn that the top page on your website is X? Maybe this week it’s time to rethink that page and see if it has a clear call to action for customers to take. 

Social media management has the potential to take up your entire day, even after you’ve left the office or turned that “closed” sign over on the door. Sometimes it may seem like your social media customers don’t ever sleep! Or, maybe you’re afraid no one is paying attention to you at all. So, how do you quickly and easily up your social media game? By working with an agency, you might be able to hand off most social media management so you can focus on sales. But, for today, here are a few things to try that should only take about 2 minutes to accomplish: 

6. Post a Facebook or Instagram Story. Post a photo, add a quick caption or ‘shop now’ button and you’re done! Stories on Facebook and Instagram are becoming increasingly popular. You might find you have more engagement here than you do posts on your social media feed itself. 

7. Find your most engaging Facebook post from the last few weeks and boost it for $20. See if it keeps the momentum going! 

8. Take 1 new picture for social media. Pick from: 

1. Inside your office or store

2. The sign outside your building

3. A few team members in front of your organization

4. One of your customers holding what they purchased

9. Modify a template on Canva or Adobe Spark to create a new social media post. There are lots of free programs out there to help you quickly design professional looking posts. Caution: It’s easy to grab a template and modify it, but does it fit your brand? Does it look like everyone else’s posts you’ve seen lately? This can help you get started, but eventually you’ll want to spend a little more time building designs that truly reflect your brand, not everyone’s brand. 

10. Create a poll on your Facebook feed or in Instagram Stories. Do you have two new products that you want to build momentum around? Ask your followers which one they like best. Are you trying to decide which color to paint the new showroom? Ask your followers! 

11. Reply to one Google review. Whether good or bad, take 120 seconds and write a quick reply or ask a follow up question. 

12. Post a Google My Business update. Double check your address, hours, phone number and email to ensure it’s all up-to-date. Especially as COVID-19 continues to change the way we all do business, it’s highly important to keep this updated. 

13. Share a review/testimonial on Facebook, Instagram or even as a Google My Business update. 

14. Give a shoutout to a business you admire or work with regularly. Did a business come through for you on a tight deadline with a product your customers were really needing? Let your customers and that business know how much you appreciate the extra hard work. Or, does a local charity need some extra support right now? Share their needs with your followers and tell them how you’re helping or why that charity means something to you.

15. Share a collage of 4 products that you want to push right now. Inside Facebook, crop each image to be square so they show up nicely on people’s feeds. 

16. Own a restaurant or store? Film a quick behind the scenes video (30-60 seconds). Show a new recipe you’re working on or some new products that just arrived. Or feature one of your employees and have them talk about their role. 

17. Create a 1-2 minute timelapse. OK so this takes longer than 120 seconds of work, but many times your phone has this capability built in. So, do you make deliveries? Do a timelapse of your route that day. Do you create something or fix something? Set up your phone to timelapse your process from beginning to end. Do you clean your lobby or store everyday at a certain time? Record your progress and show people the measures you’re taking to keep them healthy! 

Catie Overby