A year and a half ago, I decided to hire an assistant to help me with marketing.
Now, if you’ve read my previous experience and horror story of being hacked by another assistant (one that was referred to me by someone close), you’d think I would NEVER hire anyone to work in my business again.
BUT I knew that if I ever wanted to work less hours and focus more on improving my craft and working with more clients, I’d need to hire someone to help me.
Marketing takes time and effort. There’s a learning curve and a need to tweak, measure and assess.
I went from publishing content every now and then, to consistently publishing content 1-2 per week and getting hired regularly.
The best part is that people who want to chat with me about working together, already know how I could help them, because they read / watched my content, so now there’s less ‘explaining’ happening on phone calls.
There’s a way to optimize your time and create a process that is repeatable and will save you time, while keeping you consistent.
First, you have to realize that you, as an expert, need to spend a lot of your time writing, speaking, and articulating your expertise as much as possible.
Your perspective matters and is the VERY THING that will set you apart from other consultants, so spend time cultivating your body of work + how you communicate it.
It’ll create a lot of clarity and get you hired by the RIGHT CLIENTS.
I see so many consultants starting a process of creating and publishing content and then stopping, saying it’s hard to balance time working with clients and marketing their own business.
That’s because they’re not focusing on creating content.
They’re splitting their brain + creative energy between “creating”, tech problems and admin tasks.
Where do you spend more time?
If you’re spending time on admin tasks + tech problems, start thinking about assigning admin these tasks other people – there are so many talented, non-hackers who can help you build a repeatable marketing system that doesn’t require your intervention (except for the content creation part).
Keyword: repeatable. This can free up your time to work with more clients and still generate leads, so that you’ll always have clients coming your way.
Here’s how I created a system that allowed me to focus on creating content:
1 – I wrote out every ACTION I wanted to outsource, in a very detailed manner. I wrote things like, “copy content from Google document and paste into Mailchimp template”. I was very specific. From this list, I had a pretty good idea of what skill set I’d need from an assistant
2 – I video recorded my process. I sat down and recorded exactly what I do, starting from writing content all the way to pressing send( in all 3 platforms where I market my business). Then, I wrote all the steps out very clearly and simply, so that even a 5 year old can understand them.
Note: Steps 1 + 2 take a bit of time, but this time is such a worthy investment. You can pass off this process to ANYONE you hire. If you tweak your marketing strategy, you can make tweaks to this document and it’ll also help you understand what is working and what isn’t.
3 – I interviewed 4 assistants – a mix of referrals + ads I placed in some business Facebook groups.
4 – I hired one and asked if we could run a test for a month – she said yes! I gave her the document + video recording so she could follow what I do EXACTLY. We’re still working together today. I have a due date to hand in content and that’s all I do (on my batching days 😉).
And once you have this process documented, it doesn’t matter who takes over your marketing – you’ll have the process in place and it will be easy to repeat. The person you hire can get started right away, and there won’t be too long of a ‘training’ period.
And voila – consistency.
Using my marketing systems and processes , my clients have started consistently publishing their content, which has resulted in attracting qualified leads and getting hired for 2 new projects per quarter. They’re outsourcing their marketing tasks, so that they don’t feel out of balance between client work and working on their business.
Planning, batching and outsourcing are some of the things I work through with my clients in my 6 Week 1:1 program that takes consultants who are already enrolling clients from referrals but want to create an organic marketing system to enroll clients from social media and Google.
We also work on how to spend less time marketing, yet still getting their expertise published regularly and without them. This method will help you get at least 2 pieces of high quality content published and shared consistently per month, to start, without overthinking about consistency; and you’ll find yourself getting hired more consistently.
Contact me if you’re interested in this program and we will chat to see if you’re a good fit; If so, we can start within two weeks.