How much time do you spend on marketing your translation business?

Behind the scenes of my business

Time is an obsession of ours. We don’t have enough or it flies by too fast for us to catch and put to good use. So it shouldn’t be surprising that one question I get asked a lot is: How much time do you spend on marketing in an average week?

My answer may surprise you… because I have zero time specifically allocated to marketing in any given week 😱

Now before you come at me with pitchforks for ‘not walking my talk’, hear me out. I still market my translation services. I’ve just never been able to successfully block my time into different activities and stick to it. Or be that rigid about my weekly schedule. If you’re one of the many people who are excellent at time blocking, I tip my hat to you. But if you’ve struggled to do this like me, there could be a few reasons.

Why time blocking might not work for you

If following a detailed schedule feels hard – even or especially if you’ve created it yourself – it could be because:

a) You’re not realistic about how long an activity will take.

b) You allow an activity to flood into the next block of time because now you’re all warmed up and in the zone and you want to keep going.

c) You aren’t clear about what you want to achieve in the 15 minutes you’ve allocated so you spend the first 10 minutes figuring that out and then feel frustrated when you haven’t hit the finish line.

Tick, tick and tick. Although I surprise myself every so often having lowered my expectations about those ‘quick’ 15-minute tasks.

Bonus reason: you’re ultra-available to your clients and push your own marketing to one side in favour of helping your clients. Yes, I also plead guilty to this on occasion. But you can provide an excellent and responsive service without leaping into action the very minute you spot the last-minute request or favour.

Instead of assigning a time to each marketing activity

So if I don’t assign marketing activities to timeslots, what do I do instead?

1. I know what I want to achieve by the end of the day/week/month and
2. I work towards specific goals, keeping a big picture overview. 

My goals look something like this:

•  I write my email newsletter every week, which will arrive in your inbox on Wednesday or Thursday.
  
• The Expedition Group receive a *Tuesday Travels* email from me every… Tuesday 😉. This contains relevant details for our monthly marketing adventure so that always gets written to my promised deadline.
  
• When I run a direct response marketing campaign, I set dates to complete each stage and ensure it can fit around client work. There’s no need for tight turnarounds. But once I’ve given my prospective clients a deadline (to take advantage of an offer I’m sharing with them), there’s built-in motivation for me to follow up before and after that date.
  
• When I opt to attend client events, I work backwards from my travel dates to make sure I’ve interacted with interesting people ahead of time – so it’s easier and less stressful than introducing myself on the day. Then I decide what marketing assets I want to take with me or have on my website to share with prospective clients. This becomes another project that I can incorporate with a natural deadline.
  
• Depending on the month and my focus for a particular period, I might set myself a goal to publish a blog (hi!) or connect with 5 people in my chosen sector or post on social media 2x a week. But I won’t prescribe when that has to get done or allocate a time block for these tasks.

You can see that there’s a kind of structure to my marketing. But it feels like a lot of it gets done by stealth and as a by-product of different decisions I make along the way. So it’s less about how much time I spend on marketing and more about what needs to get done by when.

External accountability to force my hand

Another structure I put in place to help me make time for marketing is external accountability. And I set aside protected time with others who will give me the side eye if I show up on Zoom and say I’m translating and editing for clients again instead of doing the writing I absolutely committed to at the start of the week.

For content marketing in my source language, German, I enlist the help of a friendly colleague. By promising she’ll receive my blog post, client newsletter or web copy by a certain date, it’s only fair that I stick to my promises. We’re all familiar with the clients who make empty promises and turn up two weeks later than scheduled with a project that’s now become urgent. Don’t be that client! 

Finding time to spend on marketing without time blocking

The start of the month is a good time for making good business decisions. A fresh new month, a fresh new quarter, even a fresh new week – harness those energising vibes. If you’ve struggled to set aside time for marketing, try answering these two questions and work backwards to get a big picture overview.

1. What do you want to achieve?

and

2. What work have you got booked in this month to sustain you on your adventures?

The answer to the second question will inform both your marketing and how much time you have available.

If you’d like more client work and exciting opportunities, that means more nudging and proactive marketing.

If you’re fully booked with client work and/or personal projects, then be realistic about how much time you have. There may be times when you’re booked up but are eager to put in extra time to market yourself and attract better long-term clients. Ultimately, this will shift the quality of work you’re getting. At other times the idea of adding more to your schedule feels overwhelming and impossible. In which case, take it easy and adjust your expectations now instead of setting yourself up for failure.

Adjusting your expectations might mean extending the timeline to reach your goals. Or analysing your schedule and making sure you carve out some time for your marketing if you’re impatient like me and insist on having your cake and eating it. Somehow it all gets done! And no, I don’t work evenings or weekends as a rule – but I may listen to business podcasts or note down any ideas that crop up when not at my desk.

Know your preferences and (roughly) plan accordingly

Everyone works differently. If you know you like the structure of time blocking and it works for you, assign time for marketing in your schedule. But instead of ‘marketing’, describe the specific activity you plan to work on.

If you’re like me and enjoy a more flexible schedule, don’t get frustrated by all the productivity experts. Decide what you want to get done and when that needs to get done by. Get your marketing done by stealth.

Plan and track for more effective marketing

One approach I have found useful is to keep all my marketing projects in one place. And because I hadn’t found a planner to fit me, I created my own. The marketing planner for translators shown below follows a flexible but no less effective approach to marketing.

It doesn’t guide you to track by time, but you can use it to plan and track your actions. Like any good planner, you’ll start by focusing on your destination. Then it guides you to break down your quarterly goals into monthly and then weekly actions. If you’re ever unsure what to do next, I’ve got you covered! There’s a list of 20 ways to market your translation business for inspiration and a few prompts to remind you to check in with your clients throughout the year.

Whether you’re motivated by deadlines or ticking off daily tasks, this undated planner will help make your marketing more effective. I can’t wait to flick back once it’s full and read my marketing story for the year. That’s much more interesting than how much time I spend on marketing. Will you give it a go?