I suppose you may be thinking “Do I need to plan marketing?” In short, yes you do. Marketing is a vital organ in your business and it needs to be managed to constantly promote the business and keep it moving forward. So what marketing activities do you do to promote your business?

There is a huge range of various marketing activities that you can do to promote the business, but before you get stuck in with the activities you need to create a marketing plan and decide what?s best for your business. When we create marketing plans for clients we look at these 9 key points

1. Situation – where are you now? You need to know your starting point, in terms of your products and services, your resources and your competitors, before you can move on.
2. Objectives – where do you want to be? Set some short, medium and long term goals for your business.
3. Strategy – how will you get there? Will you sell more of your existing services to existing clients, new services to existing clients, existing services to new clients or new services to new clients? Each strategy needs different types of marketing.
4. Targets – who are your ideal clients? They are not everyone with a pulse and a cheque book! You need to be specific.
5. Tactics – what is the best marketing to do? Don’t try to do everything and don’t do something that won’t get your message to your ideal clients.
6. Money – how much does it cost? Work out how much you can afford to spend, before you agree to any ‘special offers’.
7. Men & Women – who will do it? Do you know what you’re doing, or do you need help? Do you have staff who are better at networking than you?
8. Minutes – how long will it take? Marketing is not an overnight, quick fix, to allow time for things to work.
9. Measurement – why should you measure? Because you need to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t work. The only way you’ll know what’s working is by measuring your marketing.

Once you have gone through these 9 stages you will have a completed marketing plan that you can use to promote your business that will help you gain a contestant stream of clients. You will have decided what marketing activities are best for your business and how much of your time you should spend doing them.

The other advantage of creating a marketing plan is that you can identify what you can and cannot do. If you discover that you need a new website or that you need to be advertising yourself on social media more then you have two choices. Either you do it yourself or you hire in a business to do it for you. This marketing plan will highlight what resources are available to you what to invest in.

Creating a marketing plan may not be your specialisation or you may not have the time to create one. If you want some further advice then have a look out on Friday as Debbie will be talking more about the importance of a marketing plan and how to incorporate it in the business. If you would like to talk one on one about marketing plans then contact me for more information.