A friend works in marketing for a global cosmetics company and was discussing its latest campaign to get women to buy more lipsticks. Most women, research suggests, have two lipsticks. One for work and one for play. The marketing team needed to find a way to get women to buy just one more lipstick. Their new campaign was called ‘weekday, weekend, wow’ – one lipstick for the weekday, one for the weekend – and then they asked ‘what’s your wow lipstick?’ Who doesn’t want some wow in their day?

Marketers and advertisers are about making you change behavior. There are two main variables – the ease of undertaking the task and the motivation to do so. These two elements are the axis on your graph with behavior change able to be plotted between the two. Everything can be changed, some changes requires more creativity than other.

The problem many small businesses face with marketing is finding the time. Everyone is so busy completing their tasks that marketing falls by the wayside.

Suggestions to improve this:-

1. Set aside 1 hour a day – make it part of your daily routine. Doing something is better than doing nothing at all.

2. Create action steps – set down some marketing goals you’d like to achieve. Have one step per month. For example, you might check out Pinterest or Twitter to see if they fit your marketing needs.

3. Map out 6 months in advance – list relevant events, topics, and themes you’d like to explore over time. It makes the task feel more manageable.

And once you begin these tasks, they’ll become habits and much easier to achieve. And you’ll come up with the ‘wow’ campaign.

Photo Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1039790