One of the easiest times to stop marketing is when business is good. You’re busy with client work, new matters are coming in, your calendar is packed and your pipeline looks healthy. There are only so many hours in the day, so writing a LinkedIn post, reaching out to an old contact or working on an article can easily move to the bottom of the list.
I understand why this happens. Marketing feels less urgent when you already have plenty of work. But those busy periods are some of the most important times to continue investing in marketing and business development because so much of what you do today can affect where your business comes from six months, a year or even several years from now.
Marketing takes time to work. Relationships take time to develop. People may read your content for months before ever contacting you. A former client may move to a new company two years from now and remember you. Someone you meet at a conference may introduce you to a future client. You usually can’t predict which activity will eventually lead to business, which is exactly why maintaining your marketing when you aren’t under pressure to produce immediate results is so important.
Marketing Works Best Before You Urgently Need Business
I see professionals become much more interested in marketing when something changes. A large matter ends, a significant client goes elsewhere, the pipeline starts thinning out, an industry slows down or someone begins thinking about changing jobs. Suddenly there’s time for LinkedIn, networking, articles, speaking engagements, newsletters and reconnecting with people they haven’t spoken to in years.
All of those activities can help, but they’re much easier and more effective when you’ve already been doing them. If you’ve stayed in touch with a former client over the past three years, reaching out feels completely natural. If the last time you contacted that person was when you needed something, it’s a different conversation. The same applies to your online presence. Someone who has been reading your LinkedIn posts or articles for a year already has some familiarity with you before they ever have a reason to hire or refer you.
This is why I tell people to think about marketing as something that continues during both busy and slower periods. The amount of time you spend on it may change depending on your workload, but completely disappearing whenever business gets busy creates a cycle where you’re constantly rebuilding your visibility and relationships.
Your Busiest Periods Can Give You Some of Your Best Content
There’s another reason to keep marketing when you’re busy: this is often when you have the most useful things to talk about. You’re close to clients, hearing their questions, watching developments in your industry, solving problems and noticing patterns. You’re attending meetings and conferences and having conversations with colleagues and other professionals. Those experiences are an incredible source of content.
Start paying attention to the questions you hear repeatedly. If three clients ask you some version of the same question, there is probably a LinkedIn post or article there. Think about what clients are confused about, what has changed in your industry, what you’re explaining over and over again and what you wish people understood earlier. You can talk about these issues without discussing confidential matters or identifying clients.
I recommend keeping a running content idea list on your phone or somewhere you can easily access it. Don’t worry about writing the post or article when the idea occurs to you. Just capture it. A sentence is enough. When you have time to create content, you’re starting with a list of ideas that came directly from your actual work instead of staring at a blank screen wondering what to say.
Stay Close to the People Who Already Know You
Some of your best future business opportunities may come from people who already know you: current clients, former clients, referral sources, colleagues, former colleagues, alumni, industry contacts and people you’ve met through conferences and professional organizations. It’s easy to focus so much on finding new people that you overlook the relationships you’ve already spent years building.
Make relationship maintenance part of your regular business development routine. Once a month, look through your contacts and identify several people you haven’t spoken to recently. There doesn’t have to be a complicated reason to contact them. Send an article related to something you discussed, congratulate them on a new role, ask how things are going or invite them to an event that might interest them. If you know two people who would benefit from knowing each other, make the introduction.
LinkedIn can make this much easier because people are constantly giving us reasons to reconnect. Job changes, promotions, company announcements, speaking engagements and posts can all create natural opportunities to reach out. You can also turn on the notification bell for a small group of clients, prospects and referral sources you especially want to keep up with so you’re more likely to see what they’re sharing.
Keep Building Your Network
A strong pipeline also depends on continually meeting new people. When your business is already healthy, you can build those relationships without feeling like every conversation needs to lead somewhere immediately.
Think strategically about who is missing from your network. If you want to grow your work in a particular industry, look at how many people in that industry you actually know. If referrals are important to your business, identify the professionals who serve the same clients you do and could become valuable referral relationships. If there are companies you would like to work with, start getting to know people in and around those organizations long before you have an opportunity to pitch them.
Conferences and events are especially useful when you approach them this way. Connect with people you meet while the interaction is still fresh, then stay in touch afterward. Comment on their LinkedIn posts when you have something useful to add, send them something relevant occasionally and look for opportunities to see them again. A single meeting becomes much more valuable when you continue the relationship after everyone goes home.
Keep Showing People What You Know
Consistent content gives people a way to learn what you know even when you aren’t directly interacting with them. You don’t have to post every day or turn yourself into a professional content creator. Choose a schedule that works with your actual life and workload.
For some people, that might mean two LinkedIn posts a week. Someone else may post once a week and publish a monthly newsletter. You might write one substantive article each quarter and use the ideas from that article to create shorter posts over the following months. There is no perfect number that works for everyone.
I also recommend identifying three to five areas you want people to associate with you. They should connect to your expertise, your business goals and the questions your audience actually cares about. Then approach those subjects from different angles. Answer common questions, explain developments, share lessons from your experience, create checklists, comment on industry news and explain issues people often misunderstand. Repetition around your core subjects can actually help people remember what you do.
Use Strong Client Relationships to Find Additional Opportunities
When you’re busy with client work, it’s easy to become so focused on completing the immediate assignment that you miss what else is happening with the client. Make time for conversations that go beyond the specific work on your desk. Ask about their priorities, what has changed in their organization, what they’re concerned about and what they expect to be dealing with over the next six or 12 months.
Those conversations can help you identify other ways you or your colleagues can help. They can also introduce you to other people within the organization. If you’re working primarily with one person at a client, ask yourself who else you should know there. Building multiple relationships can deepen the client relationship and help you better understand the organization.
And when a new client comes in, ask how they found you. Keep track of whether it was a referral, LinkedIn, your website, an article, a speaking engagement, Google, an AI tool or something else. After you collect enough information, patterns can start to emerge. You may discover that an article you wrote several years ago is still bringing people to you or that a referral source is responsible for more introductions than you realized. That information can help you decide where to spend your marketing time.
Make Marketing Manageable When You’re Busy
The biggest obstacle during a busy period is usually time, so your marketing system has to be realistic. I would much rather see someone consistently spend a small amount of time on marketing than create an elaborate plan they abandon after three weeks.
Block a manageable amount of time on your calendar for business development and relationship building. It could be 30 minutes twice a week. During that time, you might respond to LinkedIn comments, reach out to two contacts, follow up with someone you met recently and add a few ideas to your content list. Small amounts of consistent activity can accomplish a lot over the course of a year.
Batching content can also help. If you have an hour and several ideas, draft two or three posts instead of waiting until the morning you want to publish something. Repurpose what you already have as well. An article can become several LinkedIn posts. A presentation can become a checklist and a series of posts. A webinar can become short video clips, written content and follow-up material. Updating and reusing strong ideas is much more efficient than continually starting over.
Get More From Conferences, Webinars and Speaking Engagements
If you’re already spending time attending or speaking at an event, use that investment more fully. Before a conference, look at who will be there and identify people you want to meet. Connect with people in advance when appropriate and let your network know you’ll be attending or speaking.
During the event, capture useful ideas and take photos you may want to use later. Afterward, share something substantive about what you learned or discussed and personally follow up with the people you met. If you gave a presentation, use the material again. Individual slides can inspire LinkedIn posts, audience questions can become articles and the presentation itself can become follow-up material for clients and prospects.
A conference shouldn’t become a three-day marketing activity that ends when you get on the plane home. The relationships and content coming out of it can continue working for you for weeks or months.
Pay Attention to What Happens After You Publish
Publishing content is one part of the process. What happens afterward can tell you a lot about your audience and create additional business development opportunities.
Read your comments and respond when someone has taken the time to contribute to the conversation. Notice who is engaging with you. If a prospect starts regularly commenting on your posts, a former client suddenly appears in your notifications or someone you haven’t spoken to in years engages with an article, pay attention. You don’t have to immediately turn every interaction into a sales conversation, but those signals can give you natural opportunities to reconnect.
Also spend some time with other people’s content. Your clients, prospects and referral sources are sharing information about what they’re doing and what matters to them. Reading and engaging with those posts can help you stay informed while keeping relationships active between direct conversations.
Review Your Marketing Before Something Goes Wrong
Every few months, take a broader look at your business development activity. You don’t need a complicated dashboard. Ask yourself where your recent business came from, which relationships are becoming stronger, which ones have gone quiet, who is referring work to you, what content is attracting the right audience and where you want to build more relationships.
Also look ahead. If one client represents a large percentage of your business, think about what would happen if that work disappeared. If your pipeline depends heavily on one referral source, consider how you can develop additional ones. If nearly all of your relationships are concentrated in one industry, decide whether that creates a risk you want to address.
This kind of review is much more useful when things are going well because you have time to act thoughtfully. You can strengthen relationships, build new ones and expand your visibility without the pressure that comes with urgently needing new business.
Make Marketing Part of How You Work
Marketing doesn’t need to be a separate project that competes with your actual work. Some of the strongest marketing comes directly from the work, relationships and conversations already happening in your professional life.
Your client questions can inform your content. Your conferences can expand your network. Your articles can support your follow-up. Your LinkedIn activity can help you stay connected to people between meetings. Your speaking engagements can create months of additional content. Your client conversations can help you identify new opportunities and your network can introduce you to people you would never have reached on your own.
When business is strong, keep doing these things. You can adjust the amount of time you spend on them during particularly busy periods, but try not to completely disappear. Marketing and business development are much easier when they are ongoing habits instead of activities you suddenly restart when you’re worried about where the next client or matter will come from.
There will always be things you can’t predict. A great client changes jobs. A major matter ends. A company gets acquired. Budgets change. An industry slows down. Your own career takes a turn you didn’t see coming. I’ve seen all of these things happen, and they’re reminders of why continuing to market yourself when everything is going well matters so much.
So keep investing in the people who know you and keep making room for new people to get to know you. Share what you know. Stay in touch. Make the introduction. Go to the event. Follow up afterward. Keep writing and posting even when your calendar is packed. You may have no idea which conversation, relationship, article or LinkedIn post will eventually lead to something, and that’s okay. Marketing has a way of working over time and often in ways you never could have predicted. The best thing you can do is make sure you’re still doing it when you don’t urgently need it.
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