Notice that my title is NOT Write A Marketing Plan For Your Business. This is not wrong but in my experience with entrepreneurs they don’t do it. It may feel too formal, too big a task, too frightening for them or they just don’t ‘have’ (translate this to ‘make’) the time. I believe that your business and therefore your marketing is changeable. Watch the results you get from each kind of marketing activity. (Don’t just do it once and expect it to work and grow your business.)
This is not about having a PLAN (noun) but about PLANNING (verb). Inherent in the word plan is that you only do it once. In reality you keep doing it. Definitions for planning include: to formulate a scheme or program for the accomplishment, enactment, or attainment of; or to have as a specific aim, purpose or intention; or to make plans.
So what are you doing and how do you do marketing planning? Here are some of the things you can do.
1. Where are you going? Write down your goals for the next year and the next five years.
2. Know where you’re going and with whom. Describe your “ideal client” in detail. Who do you want to work with?
3. What marketing are you doing now? List the marketing activities you’re doing to achieve this. Make a detailed list of what you’re doing, when (the dates and how often), how many clients you get from this and how much each spends with you.
4. What marketing works at getting you clients? Do more of this.
5. What marketing doesn’t work at getting you clients? Stop doing this or if you’re only doing it once, do it more. An example: it took going to the same networking group each month about 8 times to get clients there. Now that they know me, they use my services.
Start again from #1 and do it again.
Review the results of all of your marketing every six months and at the end of every “corporate” year.
Marketing is meant to change with “the times” and what your clients want. Get their attention and be the person/ business that everyone has heard about, is talked about and shared (like a good movie is) … AND buys from. Be known and keep reviewing the marketing that works.
