Here’s a golden nugget for you: if you pushed the "on" button for your marketing activities today, it will take three months to start generating results.

Sorry to disappoint, but that’s just what happens. OK, so it can happen quicker, but normally only if you have a large amount of budget to throw at it and/or a marketing team to handle it all for you. And I’d probably be right in thinking you have neither?

Some promotional techniques are also quicker than others at pulling in results (for example, direct mail to a targeted and qualified list), although again you’re likely to need expert advice on this AND be prepared to allocate a large enough budget.

So, that leaves you with a three month gap…..

….which actually is a good thing to know, because at least you can plan for it.

Your job, then, is to make sure you set your business and marketing goals (what are you trying to achieve?…no point doing any marketing at all if you don’t know what your goals are), and plan your marketing strategy in accordance with who your target market is. Get your niche right and your target market right - and working out how to reach your target market should be simple.

Plan your promotional activities (i.e. the activities that are going to drive interested customers & clients to your door) by putting them on a year planner, and then get going with five or six different methods.

Then start. Push the "on" button and do exactly what’s on your plan. Work hard and put the effort in….and trust the process, because you know that in three months’ time your first trickle of clients and customers will start coming in through the door.

And when they do…that is NOT the time to stop. That’s time to start getting clever and being completely in control of your marketing (otherwise it goes out of control and is likely to crash and burn): work out what’s working, what’s not (you are tracking the results of your activities, aren’t you?). Ditch the stuff that isn’t working, do more of the things that are, and test other promotional activities.

But, the key is to keep going. This avoids that "feast and famine" that a lot of small businesses suffer from, and needlessly. However busy you are, you will need to learn to manage the balance between your new clients as well as continue with your promotional activities to bring new clients in. But I guess that’ll be a nice problem to have?!