Advice for the New Year - Plan!

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.

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