Marketing: The hidden second job of small business owners

If you’re a small business owner, you already wear a dozen hats - sales, customer service, operations, accounting, and more. But when it comes to marketing? It often feels like a full-time job you didn’t sign up for. Creating posts, writing captions, scheduling content, sending emails, tracking performance - it’s exhausting! In fact, research shows that more than 58% of UK SMEs cite time restrictions as their biggest marketing challenge; no wonder business owners feel overwhelmed.

Marketing shouldn’t take more of your time than running your business.

The good news? There are smarter ways to market and they don’t involve spending every waking hour glued to Canva, Instagram, or analytics dashboards.

Why Marketing Feels So Time-Consuming

Before we look at solutions, let’s be honest about why marketing feels like such a time sink:

Content creation eats hours.
Coming up with ideas, writing, designing, editing… it’s a creative treadmill that never stops.
No clear plan = wasted effort.
Without a simple strategy, most owners bounce between platforms, posting randomly and hoping something sticks.
Trying to do it all alone.
From social media to email to ads, most entrepreneurs don’t have a team, which means every single task falls on them.
Chasing perfection.
Owners often burn hours tweaking posts or emails that could’ve gone live already.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone, and none of this means you’re bad at marketing. It just means you need a system that works with your time, not against it.

How to Take Back Control of Your Marketing Time

Here are five proven ways to simplify your marketing so you get results without burning out:

1. Focus on Fewer Channels

You don’t need to be everywhere. In fact, trying to manage Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Facebook all at once is a recipe for exhaustion.

Instead: Pick one primary channel (the platform where your audience actually hangs out) and go deep. Support it with one secondary channel (often email). That’s it.

2. Batch and Schedule

Context switching kills productivity. Instead of scrambling daily, set aside 2 hours once a week to:

Write your posts
Design your graphics
Schedule everything ahead of time

Now your marketing runs in the background while you focus on sales or serving clients.

3. Repurpose Content Like a Pro

One piece of content should never be one-and-done.

Turn a blog into 3 Instagram posts
Turn a Reel into an email tip
Turn a customer question into a carousel

Repurpose smartly, and suddenly you’ve got a full week of content without starting from scratch.

4. Automate Where Possible

Time-saving tools aren’t just for big brands. Even the smallest businesses can:

Automate emails (welcome sequences, follow-ups)
Use scheduling tools for social media
Track leads with a simple CRM

Think of automation as hiring an “invisible assistant” that never forgets.

5. Use Proven Systems

Here’s the biggest time-saver: you don’t have to create everything yourself.

Done-for-you content, templates, and marketing frameworks mean you skip the blank page and jump straight to execution. With AI personalisation and expert guidance layered in, you still get marketing that feels tailored, without wasting valuable time that could be spent on your business.

The smarter way forward

Marketing doesn’t have to feel like your second job. By focusing, batching, repurposing, automating, and leveraging done-for-you content, you can:

Save hours each week
Stay consistent without burning out
Finally focus on what you actually started your business to do

How The Content Lounge Helps

That’s why we created The Content Lounge. We wanted to give small business owners an affordable access to professional marketing support and advice, because we believe that great marketing shouldn’t be reserved just for those brands with big budgets.

Inside The Content Lounge, you will get;

Ready-to-post content that saves you hours each week
AI personalisation so your marketing feels uniquely yours
Expert strategy and support to help you focus on what actually drives sales
Proven systems so your marketing runs on autopilot, not panic

Instead of spending nights stressing over captions or weekends glued to Canva, you’ll have plug-and-play marketing that works, so you can run your business, not just your Instagram.

Marketing made easy for small businesses

Marketing is essential, but it should never take more time than running your business itself. With the right systems, tools, and support, you can simplify, save time, and finally get consistent results.

And if you’re ready to stop marketing alone? The Content Lounge was built for you.

Join the waitlist today and let us handle the marketing so you can focus on what you do best!

Join the waitlist

Your marketing shouldn’t take more time than running your business