3 Reasons to Market Even When You’re Booked

How many times have you watched a service business owner drop off the radar because they’re booked only to reappear several months later desperate for clients?

Maybe that’s even happened to you too?

As tempting as it is to let your marketing go when your client load is full, there are some essential reasons not to.

So let’s talk three key reasons it’s important to continue marketing when your calendar is full:

1. It takes time to convert leads

Understanding the lifecycle of a client is important here. If you know roughly how long it takes to convert someone from a prospect to an actual client (on average), then you’ll have some specific numbers to work with here.

But let’s say your pipeline is roughly 3 months from the time someone discovers you via a piece of marketing to the time they become a client.

Sing that timeline, if you stop marketing today you’ll likely see your pipeline start to dry up 3 months from now. And if you’re booked out right now, what’s happening three months from now might not be top of mind. But when you hit that dry spell, you’ll be shaking your head wondering why you stopped marketing.

2. Referrals can dry up too

As a service-based business, referrals are a huge source of revenue, but if you stop marketing, your referral sources could be impacted.

For starters, if the people who typically refer business to you stop seeing you, it’s possible you won’t be top of mind anymore when they have a potential referral.

And second, they may assume you’re not marketing because you’re fully booked.

Pro-Tip: This is another reason to tell people you’re booked and not taking clients! Even if it’s temporary they may assume you’re already free the next time they have a potential referral for you. As the fabulous ladies of Scoop industries taught me, it’s always better to be specific and use language like “I’m booking clients for July or August” rather than saying “I’m fully booked right now.”

3. Staying consistent matters

This is more of a mindset issue but often times it’s much easier to stay consistent than it is to ramp something back up.

So, while marketing may not need to be your number one focus right now, you want to keep it on your to do list.

If you stop generating content or promoting it entirely, you’ll find it much more difficult to start back up again.

I’ve seen many business owners agonize over what to say to their audience after an extended absence, only to delay communicating with them even further!

This doesn’t mean you have to continue marketing in the same way when you’re booked out. Perhaps the tone of your content changes or perhaps you shift your process a bit, but just don’t stop marketing altogether.

Rather, find ways to systematize your processing or batch create your content to make it easier to manage during those busy times. This can also be great motivation to delegate parts of the marketing process to a team member so you can focus on the client work you’ve booked!

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