“Help! How do I find the time to market when I’m always working??”

“Help! How do I find the time to market??” 

Here’s another question I often get from readers (the last one was “Help! I lost my biggest client with no warning!”). How do I find time to market, when I’m already really busy with work?? 

Because everyone’s brain works differently, let’s look at this from a bunch of viewpoints:

1. Do you really not have time to market, or do you just hate it so much that you’ll do anything to avoid it?? I say this because a) lots of freelancers will outright admit this; and b) on the current T4T survey, by far the most common response to “How do you feel about marketing your freelance business?” is “I know I need to market more, but I can’t make myself do it.” So first, there’s that: maybe you really don’t have time, and maybe you “don’t have time.”
2. Do you have 15-30 minutes? I also think that a lot of people “don’t have time” to market because they’re thinking of a big block of time. “I’m going to clear my schedule and work on marketing all day on Tuesdays.” Some of us can do this, but most cannot. Nearly every student I talk to, who’s made a big marketing breakthrough this year, they’ve done it through small, consistent marketing increments rather than one massive push. 
3. If you really, really, don’t have time, are your rates too low? If you have to translate or interpret 40 hours a week in order to meet your income goals, it doesn’t surprise me that you have no time to market. The key here is to set an income goal that you can meet in about 25 billable hours (not working hours, billable hours, or hours in which you generate income) per week. 
4. Do you know your productivity tendency? I’ve talked before about Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies framework: why you do (or don’t do) the things you do (or don’t do). I’m an Upholder; a rule-follower in the extreme, so I make a rule related to marketing. But I think most of us can benefit from this rule: “Market First.” Take care of *your* business before you take care of your clients’ businesses. If I have to interpret really early in the morning, I market after that, but otherwise I do it first thing. 
5. Are you being too vague? Maybe you’re paralyzed by a lack of specifics: “work on marketing for 30 minutes” feels amorphous. Instead: nail it down. “Monday, nudge two dormant clients. Tuesday, send five LinkedIn connection requests to potential new clients. Wednesday, e-mail two potential new clients. Thursday, follow up with two potential new clients.” 
6. Can you make marketing hard to avoid? Keep a list of next marketing steps where you can see it. Defeat analysis paralysis, because you’re looking at “Respond to new LinkedIn connections.” “Follow up with XYZ.” 
7. Are you in maintenance mode? If you’re currently meeting or exceeding your income goals, you may not need to be actively marketing, but you can’t get out of the Always Be Marketing habit. It’s too easy to never pick it back up again, but you can be doing maintenance activities like posting on LinkedIn, attending a client-side event online or in person, reading the publications your clients read, etc. 
8. Do you need templates? This really helps me. There’s nothing worse than blank page syndrome when you’re writing marketing e-mails (my preferred way to market to direct clients). Instead, I keep a Google doc of all the marketing e-mails I’ve sent this year, and I’ll customize them only slightly; so much better than starting from scratch.

I hope these tips are helpful if you’re feeling like you don’t have time to market!