The thought of establishing a marketing plan for the whole year can seem daunting and overwhelming. But, if you market your company with a run and gun attitude; are you effectively spending your marketing time and budget? If you don’t have the time to plan now, will you have the time in the middle of your busy season? Now is the time to review your marketing efforts from the year and build a plan for the upcoming year.
Here are a few tips that will help make planning for 2012 a little easier and some of the benefits that will come with having a marketing strategy plan in place:
Review Your Past Marketing Efforts: Look at what you have done in the past and determine what was successful and what was a failure. Don’t be afraid of saying something was a failure, this will help you shape a more effective marketing plan for the coming year.
Establish a Budget: Without establishing a set budget for marketing you will find yourself overspending on last minute marketing efforts or not doing any marketing at all. If you have a budget, you can plan all your efforts around that budget and won’t have to worry about overspending.
Plan Your Activities on Paper: It’s only an idea until you put it down on paper and then it becomes a plan. Breakdown your activities by day, week or month in a grid so you can see a daily snapshot or a monthly overview of all your planned marketing activities.
Don’t Be Afraid to Delegate or Outsource: You are busy, delegating or outsourcing certain marketing initiatives will ensure they get completed on time and done correctly. Spending a little money might end up saving you more time and money in the end. Remember to stay involved, you want to make sure you know what is going on with your marketing.
Review Your Plan Once A Month: Plans can change and so should your marketing strategy, if you review once a month or every two months you can effectively gauge which initiatives worked well, and what ones might need to be tweaked or removed completely.
The first step in any successful strategy is planning; make sure you allot dedicated time to planning your 2013 marketing strategy well before January rolls around. Our marketing specialists are happy to sit down with you in person or by phone and help you build a marketing strategy based not only on your wants and needs but the wants and needs of your customers. After all, you are marketing to your customers; not yourself!