Here’s a little known secret to small business marketing, growing a business rapidly, that few business owners know, let alone small business owners. It’s called marketing momentum. What that means is that if you do whatever you do with your marketing one time, or just randomly, and sporadically here and there, you won’t ever reach what happens when you hit that “critical mass.”

That’s the level where, once you pass that point your marketing starts to explode into your market, bouncing around in your target market, producing results FAR above what “dabbling” here and there will do.

Ken, the owner of a small construction company, had been “dabbling” in his marketing. When I asked him why he was “dabbling” and not “turning this thing on” he said he was hesitant to turn it on fully because he felt that his marketing seemed to be a bit expensive and he was afraid that it might not work.

When I asked him, how many calls he was getting from his marketing he said, “Not much.” So, I asked him if he knew what his response rate is, that’s how many calls out of every hundred of his marketing touches he did.

He didn’t really know. So, he wasn’t in control of his marketing.

The intent of this article isn’t to go down that path of talking about what works in markeitng and what doesn’t. I’ve got plenty of other articles on that. However, the point I am making is that when your marketing is working at at least the national average for direct marketing, around 0.5% to 1.0%, and if that’s delivering prospects to your door at a price that is consistently that you can afford to acquire a client, TURN IT ON. Your questions shouldn’t be, should I do this, but “how many customers do I want to buy.”

The problem is that most people are looking at the “initial cost of marketing” and not at the “cost to acquire a customer.” Again, I deal with that in other articles.

But, where I’m going in this article is, that, for marketing that works, even barely, then there is such a thing as “marketing momentum” that is either working in your favor if you are consistently doing it, or is working against you if you aren’t doing it consistently.

Bakc to Ken, in construction, as long as he was getting a decent marketing response rate, 0.5% to 1.0%, around the national average, he shouldn’t be “dabbling” at marketing. If he was getting less than that, then “it’s time to fix it.” Don’t EVER fall for the myth that “it takes time to build a business” and continue “waiting for your business to happen.” If it isn’t happening now, it won’t happen later, or over time, just because you’ve done it for a long time.

One-time Marketing Has a Fixed, Repeatable Response Rate – Repeated, Consistent Marketing Explodes to Another Level

But, here’s my original point, if you are getting a response rate of over 1%, or close to it, then “don’t continue to dabble!”

Ken was not consistently sending out his email blasts to his list, nor consistently sending his postcard mailer invitation to his workshops, in fact he was doing his marketing only every few months instead of monthly. He also was working his networking rather sporadically. He was trying a little of this and a little of that and when he would get “a little interest” he’d say, “Well, that didn’t work very well” and back off.

When I had started coaching him, one of the first things we talked about was for him to speak to various business and social associations on a weekly basis. He had tried it once or twice, one this month, another a month or so later. When he didn’t get any calls from the first one, he was rather disappointed, and so he wasn’t anxiously going after others. In fact, the second one was on my insistence for him to get with it. He did get one from the second one who wanted to talk, but that one didn’t buy so he got gun-shy about trying it again.