Everyone knows that every January 1st is the day to make resolutions for the coming year. People agree, however, that most of our well-intended resolutions are discarded within a few months or even weeks of the start of the new year.
One business resolution is so important that it cannot be overemphasized and that is to create a marketing plan for your business each year. Whether you operate on a calendar or fiscal year, January is a good time to start thinking about the results of the past year’s marketing activities and what you would change for the coming year.
It takes time to develop goals and a plan to achieve them, so there is no time like the present to begin. Start with an outline that gives you “food for thought” which you can consider at length when business pressures lighten up.
What is a marketing plan?
A marketing plan is a strategic roadmap for how you will stay in touch with your current clients or customers, as well as how to target prospects and convert them into new customers. It can be basic or detailed … but one thing is certain. It should be written and not just something you have thought about and stored in your brain.
A marketing plan should include past performance and your projections for the coming year. These goals must be reasonable, contextual, and measurable. What do you want to accomplish? What is the timeframe? How do you propose to accomplish your goals? How can you measure whether you achieved them?
Even a basic marketing plan should include both digital and print marketing activities. The plan must address whom you intend to target with your marketing activities to shore up and strengthen existing customer relationships, as well as to build new relationships with prospects whom you want to become customers.
Digital Marketing
Do you use your website to actively communicate with your customers and prospects? Is your website optimized to assist search engine optimization (SEO)? Is an email newsletter part of your monthly marketing to inform your audience and to promote your products and services? Is Social Media an integral part of your activities?
Public Relations
Do you employ public relations when newsworthy press releases are appropriate?
Direct Marketing and Advertising
How can you effectively use print brochures or mailings in direct marketing? Will advertising in print or online be productive for you?
Brand Marketing and Reputation Management
Are you being true to your brand when marketing or giving mixed messages to your marketplace? How can you implement a review strategy to ensure that any negative comments on online review sites are addressed properly?
Why bother?
A marketing plan is key in helping you identify the market needs that can be met by your products and services. It can establish your company’s differentiation from competitors. It assists in creating direction for what you do to expand your brand to your target markets. If a particular marketing activity doesn’t support your goals, it doesn’t become part of your marketing plan.
Whether your business year has already begun, or it operates on a fiscal year basis, you can get started thinking and talking about the five most important elements of an effective business plan:
- Your business goals
- The metrics of how you will quantify and measure success
- Strategies that detail implementation of how you intend to achieve your goals
- Who needs to be involved in implementation? (both internal and external resources)
- Reports of progress that will be generated and what they will include
So many questions … and there are many more if you want to delve even more deeply into developing a structured guide for your marketing.
At Enosis GRAPHIC Solutions, we assist our clients to create a marketing plan by asking these questions and putting the answers on paper. In this way, together with our clients, we can review it from time to time. This helps us to do more of what is successful, to finetune implementation if needed, and to celebrate our successes when goals are met and exceeded!
Call Noel at 978-505-2783 if you’d like to schedule a time to discuss your marketing plan for 2021 or contact us by email.