When planning your marketing for the New Year, your
spending decisions should be partly personality driven. Who you are should
guide what you do – whether you’re a conservative, moderate or aggressive
marketing investor. And creating a plan comes out of asking yourself simple
questions like:
-
What are your goals? (Think in terms of
services performed, products sold, dollars achieved, incentives paid and rate
of increased retention for customers and employees.)
- Who are you trying to reach? Rank your markets
by size.
- When will you run your promotions?
Obviously, some services are geared towards certain seasons.
- How do you plan to reach them? Select your
primary media choices; include follow-up preferences too.
- What advertising tools and unique message
will you use?
- How much do you plan to spend? Select the
percentages based on your marketing profile.
- How will you measure, improve and repeat?
You
haven’t really planned unless you’ve planned how to measure your plan’s
success. What will need changing? This question, in fact, has become even more
important in recent years.
Obviously,
we’ve seen shifts in the media we have always known. That includes the
traditional Yellow Pages and print media – both impacted by consumer preference
for online resources. And online media is growing ever more prominent.
Where
to begin? Set a marketing
plan in motion, no matter how small. At the most
basic level, divide your year into quarters and define which ones are your peak
seasons and which are “off-peak.” Figure exactly what you’ll
spend to promote what during that time. Then decide “how” you’ll deliver that
message (media). You’re ahead of most of your competition just by doing this.
