..is stopping marketing when you've got lots of work on.

I know that doesn't sound like a huge disaster – but hear me out.

If you cut back on marketing when you've got plenty of clients, not only does it mean that you suddenly have to scrabble around for work when your boom period ends…

…it also means your marketing is going to be WAY tougher when you do start it back up.

If you need clients in a hurry, you don't have time to build relationships. You don't have time to build your credibility. Instead you end up using brute-force methods to try to find “hot prospects”.

As I explored in a recent blog post, if you take a long term view then there are plenty of leads out there. Plenty of people who will need what you have in 3, 6, 9, 12 months time.

What's in short supply is people who need your stuff right now. And if you do happen to find them, chances are they're already hooked up with someone else who's taken the time to nurture a relationship with them.

But if you keep marketing when you've got plenty of client work you can be establishing those relationships and building credibility well in advance of them needing help.

By the time you need the work, many of those people you've built relationships with will be ready to buy. And they'll already trust you and know what you can do.

If you have to win work in a hurry from a standing start, then the only sort of work you'll win is work where the client doesn't need to have established a relationship and you don't need to build credibility. That's commodity work. Painful and low reward.

In next Sunday's email I'm going to be sharing some of the ways I've found to fit marketing into your schedule when you're busy with client work.

But the first step is critical: you have to recognise you need to do it. It's not just “nice to have”, it's absolutely essential.