Marketing is damn hard. It’s even harder when you run a business solo; you’ll never find the time to market, so it doesn’t get done until it’s too late.

I’ve had a lot of problems marketing over the past several months. The root cause is because I haven’t been able to get myself into a habit of marketing a little at a time. I realized, to make my business succeed, I need to change my marketing process so I can tolerate it and even (gasp) have fun with it.

To con myself into marketing, I related it to something I enjoy; playing a game. In every game you try to get from one level to the next using a set of defined rules.

My Marketing Game

To build my marketing into a game, I needed some simple rules and a few levels. These rules are meant to build on each other and to motivate me to move to the next level quickly.

1. Each levels get progressively harder
2. Reward for completing each level
3. Reward for beating the game
4. Level timer, all levels get reset every Monday

My Levels

1. Level One actions:
   • Write blog entries for 2 hours per week (typically 1-3 posts)
   • Business branding for 1 hour per week
   • Ask for referrals at the end of every project, successful or declined
2. Level Two actions:
   • Comment on 1 new blog every week
   • Work on an Open Source project for 2 hours per week
3. Level Three actions:
   • Work to create an online services, 8 hours per week
   • Get published (yes, it’s vague because I don’t know the first steps yet)

How I’m doing

I’ve been playing this game for a few weeks now and I’m starting to see an improvement with my marketing. Instead of putting my marketing off, I’m starting to spend a little time here and there to slowly grow. As long as I can keep this up, I’ll be able to meet this month’s goal.

Eric

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