subject: 9 Steps To Creating A Solid Marketing Plan: Practice What You "reach" [print this page] In business, failing to plan sends up one big red flag about you: you're planning to fail. Still, I know of no business owner who goes into business with the idea that they want to fail. So, what's one leading cause of failure in business: a faulty or non-existent Marketing Plan.
Without a solid Marketing Plan, business owners spend excessive amounts of money on ineffective marketing.Think of it like taking a trip to a place you've never gone before without a map. True, it might be an exciting journey, but chances are, you'll use excess gas driving around and around in circles, getting nowhere fast, eating up something valuable that you can't get back: TIME.
But it doesn't have to be that way. What you can put in place today can save you hours and hours of time tomorrow and in your future,and can turn a teetering business into a commercially profitable enterprise, affording you time to work ON your business rather than 24/7 IN it. Here are the nine essential steps we teach when business coaching:
DEFINE: First and foremost, define what the role of your marketing is.
VISUALIZE: To accomplish this, you need to have a vision for your company. Using the map analogy again, think of it this way. You have to know where you're going to figure out how to get there.
CALL TO ACTION: Be clear on what you want potential clients to do? If you want them to call, be clear about why and what you'll tell them when they do. If you want them to visit your website, be clear on why and what they will gain by following your direction. Years ago there was a clever bumper sticker going around. It said, "Don't follow me, I'm lost." You don't want potential customers to put that figurative bumper sticker on your business.
VALUE: To ask what you want potential customers to do is also to imply that you have to know what they want. If you are singing "Who's" classic, "Who are you, who, who, who, who," then you have a ways to go before reaching your audience. Obviously, different people want different things, but you have a service or product you feel will help them, and you must think them as individuals, not groupies.
COMPETITION: To know your competitive edge, you must know your competition. When you visit their sites, are you impressed, repelled, envious, disgusted? Study them. What do they do that you like. What do they do that you hate? UPS delivers, but for business owners, USP (your unique selling proposition) delivers. If you don't know what your unique selling proposition is, how will your customers? Define it!
BENEFITS: One way to determine that is to think of the value you offer the customer you are trying to reach. If it's all about you, you'll turn your potential customer off, but if you show them how they will benefit and back it with testimonials and proof, you're halfway there.
MEASURING & TRACKING: We're in an age of social media, from Adwords to Zonk and everything in between, but social networking is only as good as the person who knows how to master it. If you're not proficient in social media, find someone who is. 50% of marketing is wasted ONLY if you don't know which 50% it is. Just ask Henry Ford. The key is measuring and tracking responses, coding each campaign, and having a system in place as a means of identifying and capturing leads.
BUDGETING: "Money, money, money, money!" may have been a key lyric for the O'Jays in their son, "For the Love of Money," but for business owners, marketing is budgeting and important budgeting at that, for marketing is not an expense - it's an investment. In order to know how much you are going to spend, you need to be clear on the Return on Investment (ROI) you want to gain.
FLEXIBILITY: It's not just for rubber. While a solid plan needs to have the backbone of steel, it also needs to be flexible in the event that changes need to be made, and believe me, you should revisit your marketing plan every 90 days and assess what's working, what needs changing, and establish a new goal.
ACTION: No plan is effective without Action. Putting that Action into place takes strategies and processes that are proven and guaranteed. No amount of wishing makes something come true. A colleague of mind bends a favorite expression and says, "Practice what you Reach".
My motto is: no games, no gimmicks, just results for a reason. Here's to your success.
