Why Your Secretary Has Better Things to Do Than Your Marketing

We get it. You’re a small business. You most likely don’t have thousands of gold bars sitting in the safe under your desk. You count every dollar that comes in and then count it again when it goes out. You’ve probably heard experts tell you (or maybe deep down you know it yourself) how important marketing is to your success, but you’ve never been able to justify it in your budget.

So what do you do? You do the same thing thousands of other business owners from around the country do.

You make your secretary do the marketing.

Before you get any crazy ideas or report us to the Secretaries Of America Union (we’re pretty sure that’s not a thing), we want you to know that we love secretaries. They are some of the best and most important team members you can have. That doesn’t mean they should be spending their time marketing your business.

Your secretary is like every other person you hire. They have a special set of skills and can increase your level of customer service and your bottom line, but ONLY IF you let them do the job they are best at.

Marketing is not a wham, bam, thank you ma’am kind of endeavor. Your Facebook page, website or print ads need constant attention and updates. If you want to see real results from your marketing efforts you need to put your money and time where your mouth is. Marketing shouldn’t be the thing that gets thrown out to whoever doesn’t seem busy at the moment.

The biggest issue that we see when small business owners ask us why there not getting results is simple. It almost always comes down to a lack of defined goals or strategy. Your business model wasn’t created by accident. You didn’t succeed because you did the minimum. You worked hard and had an intentional strategy to build and grow your business.

That same principle is what will work for any type of marketing. You can’t just ask your secretary or that summer intern to throw together a couple Facebook posts and expect to get more customers.

Technology has changed the way businesses like yours connect with potential customers. 100 years ago, the success or failure of a small business was often determined by word of mouth or by the visibility of your physical location.

For better or worse, marketing is much more complicated today. It takes more time and expertise to get it right. You need quality graphics, excellent copy, engaging video, and so much more to really crush your marketing. As much as you might think you can do it yourself or give it to your secretary to save money, the harsh reality is that you probably can’t. Even if you hire one of those crazy hip millennials fresh out of college to be your secretary, they won’t be able to keep up with the demands of a quality marketing strategy and accomplish the things you actually hired them to do.

Marketing is not a spigot that you can turn on and off… whenever your secretary has time to do it in between the 30 other things they should be working on. Your secretary has important things to do. Let them do what you hired them to do and and for the love of all that is holy, please stop viewing your marketing as something your business can live without.