Money isn’t everything – budget time and attention too

What’s your total marketing resources?

No, not just the number of dollars you spend on media, services, and clicky pens. I’m talking about the other parts of the equation: time and attention.

Time + attention + money = total resources.

Time, of course, is a combination of staff time (how much time can and should you spend planning, directing, evaluating, deciding, and executing?) as well as calendar time (how long does it take to get things done?).

Attention is probably the most important, but it’s hardest to manage and nearly impossible to quantify. It’s a combination of several things — levels of care, responsibility, effort, and priorities. What are you willing to neglect in order to give a certain project the attention it needs? What can you delegate? What do you need to handle personally? (Or what should others delegate to you?) How much do you honestly care? Where does it make the most sense to trade dollars for time and attention, such as by using the services of trusted experts?

Great marketing demands plenty of time and attention, but these too often get neglected in the mad scramble to obtain, justify, increase, track, and evaluate dollars. Make sure you budget the time and attention needed to do things right and make the most of your dollars.