The 9-Month Principle
As entrepreneurs, we are often impatient; we want business to fly through the door right now. We think that if we write an article in a local trade publication, attend a few networking meetings and hire a computer geek to boost our website rankings on Google, that will produce instant and fruitful results. This is rarely the case.
I equate the time required before seeing successful results from organic marketing with the time it takes for a baby to come into this world – nine months. A lot happens between conception and birth. This is also true of marketing.
From my experience, it can take up to nine months of attending a networking group before people trust you and give you their business. It can take writing quarterly articles for a trade publication for three issues before the phone starts to ring. It can take sending out nine monthly enewsletters before you reach your sales targets.
Often, we lose sight of how important frequency is to getting results. We lose perspective because we may have been planning a marketing campaign six months prior to its launch date. In the prospect’s mind, however, the promotion was seen for the first time just yesterday.
Commit to regular and consistant marketing activities before you decide whether what you are implementing actually works.