Here is Your 2010 Marketing Plan

I know you’ve been procrastinating. You should have planned a 2010 Marketing Plan, but you keep putting it off. You keep telling yourself you will get to it soon, but little things pop up and drag you down. Especially with holidays here.

So I want to help you out. I’ve got a skeleton of a plan here. You just need to fill in the blanks. Think of it as an extremely focused version of Madlibs.

So here goes:

2010 MARKETING PLAN FOR_____ (your business name) _____

Objective(s): _____(state one or two measurable objectives, like “Double the size of my email database” or “Increase sales by X%”)_____

Target Market: _____ (Who is your ideal paying customer? What are they like?) _____

Initiatives:

1) First Initiative:

• Marketing Channel: _____ (Choose one channel like events, direct mail, advertising, signage, social media, etc.) _____


• Marketing Message: _____ (Based on this initiative, what one message do you want your target to understand?) _____


• Timing: _____ (When will you do this? For how long?) _____


• Intended Results: _____ (What do you hope to accomplish? How will you measure it?) _____


• Roles and Responsibilities: _____ (Identify who will do what components of this initiative. Do it yourself? Assign it to a team member? Hire a firm?) _____


• Estimated Cost: _____ (How much money?) _____

2) Second Initiative:

• Marketing Channel: _____ (Choose a different marketing channel) _____


• Marketing Message: _____ (Based on this initiative, what one message do you want your target to understand?) _____


• Timing: _____ (When will you do this? For how long?) _____


• Intended Results: _____ (What do you hope to accomplish? How will you measure it?) _____


• Roles and Responsibilities: _____ (Identify who will do what components of this initiative. Do it yourself? Assign it to a team member? Hire a firm?) _____


• Estimated Cost: _____ (How much money?) _____

3) Third, Fourth, Fifth, etc. Initiatives

• Repeat the above for as many initiatives as your resources can handle. This all depends on what you and your business can handle. By all means outline some more. However, if you are just doing this by yourself or if your resources are few, don’t do any more than five.

Not too complicated, right? Sure, we could dig into this even deeper and optimize this for your particular business. So just consider the above plan as your starting point. Now, fill in the blanks and strategize about your business and your marketing message.

I know you can do it. So get off your procrastinating bottom and get planning. Failing to plan is planning to fail!

As you move through 2010, you should be able to understand what is working and what is not. This will really take you to the next level because you will grasp where to best invest your marketing dollars.

Lastly, just a reminder that a good Marketing Plans is S.M.A.R.T. (Strategic, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound). If you really want to move your business to the next level, you need to get S.M.A.R.T. with your Marketing Plan.

So what are you waiting for? Your plan is ready to go. No more procrastinating and let’s get to that next level!

6 Steps to Successful Event Marketing

Event marketing is extremely labor intensive. But if done right way, it can fill your sales funnel with highly qualified leads and prospects.

The key to event marketing, much like any marketing, is preparation. In fact, successful event marketing is directly due to the upfront work.

The following are some suggested steps to successful event marketing. You’ll see that most of the work comes before the actual event:

1) Pick the Right Event: take some time to really understand the event, the audience and the promoters. Due diligence is critical because you want to showcase your product and service to the right people. More importantly, you want to be sure the event is promoted well. Trust me. There is nothing worse than setting up your booth at an event only to watch the grass grow. A simple way to perform your due diligence is to call the vendors that attended previously and ask them about their experiences.

2) Establish a Specific Objective: set your S.M.A.R.T. (strategic, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound) goal for what you want to accomplish. Think of your objective as two-fold: 1) what do you want your audience to say about your business and 2) what do you want to capture from your audience. Setting up this specific objective will directly determine how you approach the event, what you bring and how you expect to interact with attendees.

3) Negotiate the Terms: part of picking the right event comes down to getting the right terms. Most event promoters will accept any vendor willing to pay the fee. But you shouldn’t see yourself as any vendor. Besides, if you pick the wrong event and get no traffic, then your time and money are worthless. Work with the promoter to help you achieve your specific objective. There are a lot of ways to accomplish this: get a good booth location, base your event fee on the amount of traffic to your booth or get your business promoted in the event program or other avenues. Terms can make or break an event.

4) Keep it Simple: too often business owners want to post several signs, have several give aways and have time to meet with prospects. You need a hook to bring people in, but keep it simple. Think about your specific objective and work towards accomplishing that one objective. Everything else is extraneous.

5) Give, Give, Give: to really create buzz, give away your store. Literally. Sure, selling is important. But when you have the chance to target hundreds of prospects, give them a reason to remember you. The best way to do this is to give away what your business values most, namely your product or your service. This can be done without breaking the bank. Think of ways to give value for free which would then entice attendees to buy more. A presentation, for example, is a great way to do this. Give away invitations to a special presentation in which you reveal industry secrets. Once you have them in a presentation, then you can show them you’re an expert which will lead to more sales.

6) Follow Up: succesful event marketing is contingent upon follow up. Procrastinate on follow up and you'll waste time and money. Once you put the event date on your calendar, put the event follow up shortly after. Put it in your calendar now and you will do it. Don’t save it for later.

There is a lot involved in successful event marketing. So break it down to the basics, follow the above steps and move your business to the next level.

Avoid the Mud and Get S.M.A.R.T.

S.M.A.R.T. Marketing is the only way to go when planning your marketing.

Many businesses simply market their products or services by throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks. Not only is this approach short-sighted, it’s also very messy.

Instead of simply throwing mud at the wall, think through your marketing. Make it S.M.A.R.T.: Strategic, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound.

Here is what I mean:

• Strategic: focus on the long-term and the big picture and not the tactics. Strategy drives tactics, not the other way around. We can all get drowned in the tactics of marketing initiatives: e-mail, direct mail, websites, events, etc. But real results occur when a strategy is set in place. Seth Godin’s got a great blog on strategy vs tactics that is worth a quick read. Remember, set and follow a strategy first. Then, worry about the tactics.

• Measureable: be sure you measure your marketing efforts. A little math goes a long way. Response rates, conversion rates, click rates, open rates, hits, calls, subscribers and other metrics will help you understand if you are getting bang for your buck. If you don’t measure, you cannot determine the return on your marketing dollars.

• Achievable: you certainly want to stretch and push your capabilities, but make sure you can accomplish what you set out to do. If your strategy is too lofty, you can beat yourself up and lose focus.

• Realistic: understand your brand and how people are drawn to it. Make sure your marketing efforts complement and grow the ways in which most customers find your brand. This really comes into play when you set up your marketing budget. $10,000 for a new website would be terrific, but will it generate the return?

• Time-bound: the best marketing plans have a time limit. Set up a strategic plan with a number of tactics for 6 months. After that time, evaluate. Keep and expand what is working, discard what is not. I recommend at least 6 months, though I’ve seen plans that work with less or more time. The key is the time boundary. Without it, there is no evaluation period, no measurement and no learnings.

So avoid the mud of messy marketing tactics by uniting them all under one S.M.A.R.T. Marketing Plan. Front loading a little work at the beginning will go a long way to moving you business to the next level.