What I don’t understand is why so many of you don’t have a plan to get them.
That’s why I created 99Dollarmarketing.com
Make no mistake about it, just writing a plan isn’t going to solve your problems. You must work a plan. If you have to choose between writing a simple plan (couple of hours) and posting a few ads or fiddling with social media.. you’re better off tinkering.
Now on the other hand… If you want results and you want consistency in those results then you need a solid strategic plan. One that is simple and focused so that you can efficiently work the plan.
All to often I come across small business owners that have ads in the yellow pages, ads in the paper, ads on the radio and when you really look and listen to them, they all communicate a different message. Here is the problem with that, it takes multiple contacts with your marketing pieces (messages) to take a potential customer from stranger to paying client. If every one of your messages are different and there is no common thread to tie them together, you lose the potencial compounding effect.
You wouldn’t build a house without a foundation. Yet so many business owners advertise without a strategy.
What’s in a good foundational marketing plan:
Goals – Understanding where you want to get.
Benefits – Defined & documented for future use. Make sure you know the difference between benefits and features.
Target Customer Definition- Demographics and Psychographics
Niche – “How you serve your target”
Unique Selling Proposition- Why you rather then your competitor
Brand Definition or Strategy- What you want said about you when your not there (so much more to this one).
Marketing Tactics- What methods of advertising and promotion do you plan on using.
Tracking Return On Investment (ROI)- What methods are you going to use to track each of your marketing tactics for ROI
Pricing Strategy- How do you set the price of your product or service
Budget- How much of your time and revenue are you going to dedicate to growing your business.
Now some will argue there should more more, less, or different elements in a simple plan. This is simply a starting point for businesses without a plan and quite simply sufficient for most small businesses. For those of you who need more then a simple outline. 99Dollarmarketing.com is a series of easy to understand video lessons, on for each of the ten areas above.
In our next post we will start on how to work your strategic marketing plan.
