The preposterous sounding title of this post is a direct quote from the lips of many a small business owner I have encountered. The root of this problem of course can be summed up nicely in something known as Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s Law is the adage that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” It was first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, appearing as the first sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955.

The Law is as alive and well in the small business as it may be in the halls of the largest bureaucracy on the planet. So, the key to effective marketing may simply be a matter of defining the right work to fill up the time available.

Marketing is and must become a habitual activity in your business. You must live by the marketing calendar or die by the lack of time available to complete the greasing of the squeaky wheel.

The only way to find time for marketing is to plan for it. Create a marketing theme for every month of the year and then build marketing activities on a daily and weekly basis around the theme.

You know you need to be sending out more press releases and building relationships with key journalists in your industry – make that September’s theme and do it. You know you need to build a network of strategic partners to make your referral leads really soar – make that October’s theme. You know you need a blog, you need to start blogging as a part of your Internet presence – make that November’s theme.

Create the biggest, most hard to ignore wall calendar you can find and post your year of marketing themes. Then break each month down into the action steps needed to make progress on the monthly theme. Finally, assign yourself or someone on your team daily action steps, appointments really, and then complete the daily marketing action before you pass Go or return another email.

That’s how you make time for marketing, that’s how you build marketing momentum and that’s how you make marketing expand to fill the time available for its completion.