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Does Your Marketing Plan Live in a Drawer?

Guest post by: Faith Seekings

Article Overview: Your marketing plan was created for a reason. The motivation being to meet revenue targets, increase market share, attract more ideal clients. How can you help make sure the plan gets put into action? Click here for tipa on turning plans into action.

Does Your Marketing Plan Live in a Drawer?

Eager start-ups often generate business and marketing plans. A more established company says ‘we should take this seriously’ and have one done professionally. People often initiate some of the recommended activities, enthusiastic at first. Then, they get busy, the novelty wears off, or people aren’t comfortable with marketing tasks or aren’t getting the support they need.

Result? The grand plan gets filed away and forgotten.

Have you looked at your marketing plan lately?

A marketing plan was created for a reason. You spent money and effort on it. The motivation being to meet revenue targets, increase market share or awareness and attract more ideal clients. How can you help make sure the plan gets put into action?

Turn Plans into Actions

Break it down into tasks. A good marketing plan will include timing of activities over a year, i.e. eblasts, ads, Open House, etc. Take one thing at a time (i.e. January Newsletter), work back from that deliverable, break it down into tasks (i.e. test email, upload content to template, write content, research and gather images, choose topic). Assign these tasks to specific people, with deadlines.

Make it someone’s job. Make sure they view it to be as important as other duties. Whether you recruit a marketing professional or create an in-house marketing committee, having someone in charge of scheduling it won’t get blown off.

Use software or shared calendar. Schedule activities a year in advance. If you don’t put the detailed break-down of tasks in, at least make the first alert far enough in advance to accomplish the activity. Schedule blocks of time needed to get it done.

Take it as seriously as paid work. Once you assign the bits and pieces, and schedule the time to get it done, take it as seriously as you would a client meeting or deliverable. Don’t let it be the first thing to get cancelled if something comes up. I completely understand that you want to serve your current clients well – so do we. However, many companies don’t make the time to do their marketing, then when the current work is complete, they are scrambling for more. Be consistent and continual to meet your goals.

Monitoring goals is good for motivation. Your marketing plan must have goals and objectives, and should include methods of measuring their success. If you utilize metrics and track the results, you will quickly see what’s working. Good results let you know your efforts are worth it and will motivate you to keep going.

Create Momentum

We can write strategies and plans to our heart’s content, but if they don’t translate to action, there’s no point. On the other hand, action without strategy and planning is scattered and much less effective. It seems like a lot of work, but once you get it going, get into a groove and start seeing results, it’ll get easier and easier. And remember, you’re not alone.

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Article Tags: content research, deliverable, established company, first alert, font weight, good marketing, images, job, market share, marketing committee, marketing plan, money, motivation, open house, revenue targets, rsquo, schedule blocks, start ups, ups, use software



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