If Doctor Evil can come up with a plan to take over the world, surely it cant be that much work to write a marketing plan, eh? For most people, it’s one of the most tedious parts of running a business, but having a solid marketing plan is one of the most influential things you can do in business. Marketing has got a lot easier over the years thanks to the likes of Google Ads, search engine optimisation, Mailchimp – email marketing, Facebook ads, and all the other social channels. The options are plenty and different channels will work better for different demographics and products or services. Unlike traditional print and TV/radio advertising, we can track the results from digital marketing and figure out which sales are coming from which channel. Thanks to that it’s easier to then pump more budget into that channel that is producing the most results. Once you determine your best channels you can automate as much marketing as possible. If its social media, we can schedule posts, if its Google organic search results that produce the most leads and sales then we can come up with a content marketing strategy to make your website get to number 1 and stay there.
Once you have a marketing plan, don’t be afraid to assign a healthy amount of money to support your plan. We often deal with people who are spending 100’s and 1000’s on one-off campaigns expecting massive results. In certain circumstances that works, but it’s better to have a solid marketing plan and strategy that you can feel safe about investing some real dollars in. The best results I’ve seen is from people with a solid plan and a healthy budget. A marketing plan will make a big difference in your business. Cashflow is often the biggest problem for most businesses. If you do the root cause analysis on the cash flow problems, it’s likely the majority will be related to sales and margins, or lack thereof. This comes around through the lack of a solid marketing plan. Fail to plan and you’re planning to fail.
If you need a hand putting a marketing plan together then feel free to get in touch with us!
Article by: Jeff Sutton – 20 Year Veteran of Sales and Marketing