I first heard this from someone I admire greatly in the world of online marketing.  They were basically saying that the know-how and the “what” of your business is important but if no one knows about you and what you do, it doesn’t matter.  They actually qualified it by saying that the marketing is just as important “if not more.”

Makes sense, right?

Truthfully, there are many small business owners who aren’t comfortable with this idea.  They’re proud of their skills and abilities and oftentimes have to gone into business because they feel strongly about helping others.  They believe the majority of their time should be spent doing just that.

But if you want to reach as many people as you can with your services or products, your marketing needs to be just as much a priority.  I’ve spoken to coaches who have told me that they spend Monday through Thursday working with clients and devote Friday mornings to doing some marketing.  That’s a start, but honestly, you should be doing some form of marketing every day.  It doesn’t matter if it is small and only takes you five to ten minutes.

What are the types of things you could be doing?  If you are doing business online, you could write and submit an article to an article directory, write and submit a press release, put up a blog post, interact on a social media side such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, comment on blogs or forums, prepare and send out an ezine, tweak your website for SEO, and on and on.  There are no shortage of marketing activities you could be doing.

Now, if you have all the business you can handle then by all means, keep doing what you are doing.  But if you enjoy what you do and want to keep doing it, you need to make sure you are devoting enough of your efforts to keeping your pipeline full.

It doesn’t mean the “what” of your business isn’t important, it just means that mastering marketing is as crucial as mastering your craft.

Do you agree with this?  I’d love to hear from other small business owners about how much time they spend on marketing their business in relation to the time they spend working in their business.  Feel free to let me know.