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Archive - 08/11/2016

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Marketing Plans – Why and How?

Marketing Plans – Why and How?

Do you need a Marketing Plan?

You run a small business, surely not? I mean, you’re not Amazon, but customers come in don’t they? They find you, and sometimes they even refer their friends to you. Sales are ticking along smoothly, why would you need a marketing plan?

Well, let me ask you: could you improve your sales?

When you started your business, what was your dream? Is your business shaping up that way now?

If you are honest, most of you would say that in your “dream” your business was running a little better than in reality, right? Let’s face it, how many of us “dreamt” of being middle of the road?

Yes, you do need a marketing plan or you are just cruising. If you don’t market, you’ll end up floating with the tide, not going where you want but going where it takes you. Is that the way to grow your business?

A marketing plan need not be this expensive, consultant-led exercise that you don’t understand. Why don’t you use your knowledge of your own business to design a targeted set of marketing activities that will reach out to your ideal customers?

Here’s how –

 

 

Here are the seven easy steps again:-

  1. Get to really know your product or service from the viewpoint of your customer. What are the benefits that it gives your customer? What needs does it fulfil?
  2. Get to know your ideal customer. Where do they come from? What’s their profile? Why do they need your product? What are their personal traits and emotional triggers?
  3. Set up your whole business, not just your product, to meet the customers’ expectations. How do they like to receive your product? What happens after sale? What responsiveness must you have? Do they like the experience gift-wrapped or just off the shelf?
  4. Utilise the right pricing strategy – make money, but set your price so that it attracts the customer. Should it be priced as a luxury category or a cheap one? Do you price for the unique experience or to compete?
  5. Choose the appropriate marketing activities. Are they appropriate for the stage of the sales funnel you are pitching at? Are they appropriate for your market and the characteristics of that market?
  6. Schedule the campaign. Build your marketing activities so that they reinforce each other, not some random set of happenings.
  7. Put it together, and while doing so, make yourself accountable with inbuilt monitoring and measurement systems.

If you want to know more, click here to read about my SMART Marketing Planning system.

And don’t forget, get over to the website and post a comment on your experiences in marketing your business. While you’re there, subscribe and I’ll make sure that you get more free tips, ideas and tools to grow your business sent to you every week.

 

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