How has 2012 been for you? How will 2013 be? Better, worse or about the same? Now is the time for you to decide!

2012 has been a tough year at Appletree. For the first half of the year, revenues were down, costs were up and staff were coming and going. We didn’t have much of a plan, except that we wanted to survive! We spend a lot of time telling clients that they need to plan their marketing – and helping them create powerful Marketing Plans. Then it dawned on us that we needed to listen to our own advice and create a really powerful Marketing Plan – not just one that we hoped would work. We set ourselves some really high targets and worked out what marketing we needed to do in order to reach them. We shared the work out between us, because there was a lot to do; and we started to measure our efforts properly.

The result? The second half of the year was a major improvement on the first; during the last three months we’ve hit record levels of turnover and profit margin. It’s been a lot of hard work – and a lot of fun – and it’s really paying off.

Recently we all went to the pub for a planning session and we updated our Marketing Plan for the first three months of 2013. We know what we’ll be writing about in our newsletters, blogs, tweets and LinkedIn updates. We know what networking meetings we’ll be attending and what new products and services we’ll be promoting. We know what events we’ll be speaking at and when we’re running workshops. We know who will be doing what and how we’ll measure the effectiveness of it all.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been writing a weekly blog that looks at each of the different stages you need to follow. Ad hoc marketing does not work, so you need to plan what you’re going to do and when, to make sure you have time to fit in something every single week and that you keep doing it. Read my blog (usually posted on a Wednesday) for the details of the stages and click here for a summary of this plan.

If you’ve decided to make 2013 a really successful one and you need a plan to make sure it happens, take advantage of our special offer. Join our Marketing Mentoring programme by 31 January 2013, for just £149 +VAT per month and we’ll throw in a free Marketing Planning session, worth £250 +VAT. Marketing Mentoring provides you with the support you need to keep your marketing on track each month. We’ll start with the free planning session, so that you know exactly where you’re going. Take a look at our website for full details of all the extra bonuses you get from Marketing Mentoring and see how you can plan for a great 2013!