“A colleague recently asked me if I had my marketing plan in place, and I guess the look on my face gave him the answer. Now that I’m committed to creating one, what goes into making a good marketing plan?”
If you don’t have one, put one together. You simply can’t run a successful business – any business, without one. That’s a fact of life. I’m not sure why lots of business owners simply hate putting one together, but they do. One business owner once told me he didn’t like marketing plans because it forced him to look at his marketing budget – and it looked like a huge number! Well, too bad. It’s time to get serious.
A marketing plan forces you to write down what you plan on doing. It has to be well thought out, and realistic. A marketing plan helps you learn what’s going on with your business, from quarter to quarter. You have to understand that marketing is fluid; circumstances will force you to change your plan as the year goes along. Some things you’ve planned for will work out, others will not. Some marketing tactics may work; some projects you’ve planned for may end up costing a zillion dollars over budget, and some ad campaigns may simply go bust. But you must go on!
Here’s the key: learn from your marketing mistakes, and use those to plan your next marketing moves. You can aim for the sky and end up with a major failure, but it doesn’t matter. If you learn why it didn’t work out, you’re way ahead f the game.
Get comfortable with numbers. Make some projections: “if I spend x amount on marketing, my return will be y.” You may be surprised how accurate you are. Or, you may be devastated by the disparity in your results. That’s why marketing is almost as much an art as it is a science. If everyone were always right on, every single business in the world would be successful. Not very realistic!
The other thing about marketing plans is the make you accountable. If you own the company, you’re only accountable to yourself, and that’s ok as well. If you’re a marketing manager, then you’re holding yourself accountable to management and owners. You must show everyone that you’ve built a thoughtful plan, complete with projected budgets and an analysis of the return on investment. You may be off a bit here and there, but if you’ve done your marketing homework, you should be pretty close.
There you have it. If you’re a small company and you’re wearing too many hats, get yourself an outside expert to put together a marketing plan for you. Just provide a realistic budget for them to work with, and you’ll have a good marketing guide for your company to use in the coming year.
If you don’t have one, put one together. You simply can’t run a successful business – any business, without one. That’s a fact of life. I’m not sure why lots of business owners simply hate putting one together, but they do. One business owner once told me he didn’t like marketing plans because it forced him to look at his marketing budget – and it looked like a huge number! Well, too bad. It’s time to get serious.
A marketing plan forces you to write down what you plan on doing. It has to be well thought out, and realistic. A marketing plan helps you learn what’s going on with your business, from quarter to quarter. You have to understand that marketing is fluid; circumstances will force you to change your plan as the year goes along. Some things you’ve planned for will work out, others will not. Some marketing tactics may work; some projects you’ve planned for may end up costing a zillion dollars over budget, and some ad campaigns may simply go bust. But you must go on!
Here’s the key: learn from your marketing mistakes, and use those to plan your next marketing moves. You can aim for the sky and end up with a major failure, but it doesn’t matter. If you learn why it didn’t work out, you’re way ahead f the game.
Get comfortable with numbers. Make some projections: “if I spend x amount on marketing, my return will be y.” You may be surprised how accurate you are. Or, you may be devastated by the disparity in your results. That’s why marketing is almost as much an art as it is a science. If everyone were always right on, every single business in the world would be successful. Not very realistic!
The other thing about marketing plans is the make you accountable. If you own the company, you’re only accountable to yourself, and that’s ok as well. If you’re a marketing manager, then you’re holding yourself accountable to management and owners. You must show everyone that you’ve built a thoughtful plan, complete with projected budgets and an analysis of the return on investment. You may be off a bit here and there, but if you’ve done your marketing homework, you should be pretty close.
There you have it. If you’re a small company and you’re wearing too many hats, get yourself an outside expert to put together a marketing plan for you. Just provide a realistic budget for them to work with, and you’ll have a good marketing guide for your company to use in the coming year.
