theAdmin.orgGrowing a simple software business

Marketing is damn hard. It’s even harder when you run a business solo; you’ll never find the time to market, so it doesn’t get done until it’s too late.

I’ve had a lot of problems marketing over the past several months. The root cause is because I haven’t been able to get myself into a habit of marketing a little at a time. I realized, to make my business succeed, I need to change my marketing process so I can tolerate it and even (gasp) have fun with it.

To con myself into marketing, I related it to something I enjoy; playing a game. In every game you try to get from one level to the next using a set of defined rules.

My Marketing Game

To build my marketing into a game, I needed some simple rules and a few levels. These rules are meant to build on each other and to motivate me to move to the next level quickly.

1. Each levels get progressively harder
2. Reward for completing each level
3. Reward for beating the game
4. Level timer, all levels get reset every Monday

My Levels

1. Level One actions:
   • Write blog entries for 2 hours per week (typically 1-3 posts)
   • Business branding for 1 hour per week
   • Ask for referrals at the end of every project, successful or declined
2. Level Two actions:
   • Comment on 1 new blog every week
   • Work on an Open Source project for 2 hours per week
3. Level Three actions:
   • Work to create an online services, 8 hours per week
   • Get published (yes, it’s vague because I don’t know the first steps yet)

How I’m doing

I’ve been playing this game for a few weeks now and I’m starting to see an improvement with my marketing. Instead of putting my marketing off, I’m starting to spend a little time here and there to slowly grow. As long as I can keep this up, I’ll be able to meet this month’s goal.

Eric

Stay tuned, I have another article that will help you setup your own marketing game. Subscribe to the RSS feed and I’ll tell you when it’s ready.

February flew right by me. I don’t know if it was the missing day or just being in a constant state of busy but I’m exhausted.

February Goals and Actions

I was planning on having February be a strong marketing month for me. Unfortunately I overcommitted to both my marketing and my customers. Since my customers are the most important thing in my business, I had to drop a lot of my marketing.

1. Logo Designed - My logo is almost done. I have unlimited revisions on it so I’ve been tweaking it the past coupe of weeks. I’m expecting the final copy ready this next week.

   Completed: 66%

2. 100 new RSS subscriptions - Well, instead of stepping up my online marketing in February I let it slack. This caused my subscriber base to remain flat for the month. Around the 17th I decided to cut my losses and drop this goal. I would rather work to complete another goal than to spread my focus and get nothing done.

   Canceled

3. Meet 15 new people - I tried to push this amount to 15 people, but I should have left it at my regular 10 people. By the end of the month I was able to meet 9 new people and a few could turn into potential customers.

   Completed: 60%

4. Release a large Redmine plugin - Couldn’t find the time for this either. Between customer projects, keeping the business running, and getting Sproutwire launched; I just ran out of time. I did get enough time to create a smaller Redmine plugin but it’s not released yet.

   Canceled

March Goals

Over the past months, I’ve discovered that my goals have been too aggressive for me. Alone, each goal would be a good stretch but together they are too much to accomplish in a single month. My March goals are more realistic and focused on the areas I want to grow in.

1. Complete all my Level 1 marketing habits - Ilana and I spent some time last month and classified all the different ways I’ve been marketing. My Level 1 marketing habits are the actions that have given me the best return for my time. I’ll post more about the levels in a later post but for March I’ll be focusing on three actions:

   • Write a blog entry twice a week
   • Spend one hour a week improving my brand
   • Ask for a referral at the end of every project

2. Release a large Redmine plugin - I’ve decided to make another attempt at creating this plugin. It’s going to be difficult to schedule, but I’m starting to waste a lot of time without this plugin.

Some lessons I learned from this month:

• Use your goals to help you focus: You always have hundreds of things you want to do, but you will never get any of them done unless you can focus on the important ones. Setting goals should provide focus for you, not scatter it.

How was your February? Did you get everything accomplished that you wanted to?

Eric

In order to become a great business, you need to push yourself to become great first. This requires that you get out of your comfort zone:

• Why I Don’t Work Hourly And Neither Should You - time is our only resource we will never get back. Why do we put such a low value on it by charging hourly fees?
• Evaluating New Product Ideas (focus on Tractability) - new products are the fastest way to make your business soar. They are also great ways to kill your business if you follow the wrong idea.
• 3 Uncomfortable Ways To Make More Money As A Freelancer - want to get out your comfort zone without taking drastic changes to your business. Try some of Dave Navarro’s ideas first.

All small business owners are strapped for time. Each of us have only has 24 hours in the day but we somehow have to get 28 hours of work done every day. One problem I have, is just keeping up on all the information available. Even my simple RSS feeds are overwhelming me.

I have a solution to start to take back some of our time. With the hard work of some of the freelance greats, a new service has been launched, Sproutwire. Sproutwire is a collaboration of small business owners finding content to help small businesses grow to the next level. Instead of scouring the Internet for new ideas, the Sprout Finders will do it for you.

If you haven’t signed up yet, hurry over to our signup page. Use the invite code of ER-WB to get in. Welcome to the community.

Eric

Alan Weiss says if by improving only 1% every day, in 70 days you are twice as good. Who can’t do 1% each day? With the idea of small improvements, these links are all ways you can improve your business that little bit every day:

• 25 Freelance Tips for Maximizing Your Income
• 7 Things You Can Do TODAY to Kickstart Your Freelancing Career
• 25 Stress Relief Tips for the Overworked Freelancer - Running a business can get stressful, especially when it is only us. Leo Babauta has another great post, this time on ways to reduce your stress.
• 101 Reasons Freelancers Do it Better - Great list of how freelancers have it better than the typical office employee. Good for the Friday afternoon after a long week.

Have your own tip to share? Leave a comment and let me know, I’m always looking for my 1% improvements.