All too often I run across the hungry talented entrepreneur with a great product or service who has the drive and determination to get a business off the ground but they do not know how to plan for their business future. What happens when the doors are open but the customers are not calling or worse, not buying? Desperation sets in and money soars out of the bank account but with little return. If you do not have a solid marketing plan with actionable and quantifiable measures you are looking down a very skinny funnel. Instead of hurriedly creating a website, buying advertising, hiring fulfillment or marketing agencies to get you customers, take the time to make your plan. Hire a qualified marketing professional to consult you on best practices for your industry. A website is not just an online brochure anymore. I dont think it has ever been but more than half of the small business sites I visit do not have call to action or lead generation tools on their site. This is a must have if you are online and you can truly get a return on investment from an online presence if your site is designed with generating leads and sales in mind. Online advertising is another hot marketing campaign these days but is still so new there are a lot of opportunities to get taken advantage of by unscrupulous scammers. If you do not understand how different advertising and marketing techniques work you are out to spend big bucks with little return. Arm yourself with knowledge or hire a trustworthy and reputable consultant to assist you. Executing different campaigns without consistency will make it hard to measure what works and what does not. Measuring a campaigns success is the key to driving future sales. Plan based on projections. What was your annual revenue last year? By what percentage do you expect to grow this year? Keep your expectations in line with your business plan. Trying to grow by 50-100% in a year is asking for management, employee, service and quality issues. If you do not have the business plan and marketing plan working together expect employee turn over, customer complaints or worse loss of customers. Plan for the growth of your sales by what your business plan can accommodate. There is a difference between a business plan and a marketing plan. Marketing plans are an incredibly important component of any business but many small business owners tend to neglect them because they do not have the time or resources to put one together or manage it. I have seen the difference between companies that invested in planning vs. companies that took the approach of jumping into the next big idea in marketing. Companies that plan grow at a manageable rate that keeps them prepared because they have a forecast of the future. The companies that take the unstructured approach and do not plan, typically have high growth at first then see a tremendous drop in sales after some time due to internal politics, customer dissatisfaction and employee turnover. The company never has a grasp on their financial projections and is 1-3 years from closing their doors. Final food for thought. How much money did you spend on marketing last year? How much are you willing to invest? For instance the average direct mail campaign has a gain of 2 -6% return on investment. How many direct mail pieces will you mail out? What will the cost be? If you are struggling with how to get the phone to ring, website visitors not making conversions to sales, it may be time to invest in some solid planning. Know your goals and limitations before you give your money away to the first marketer that promises you big sales. All campaigns are not equal. You need to know what type of campaign will work best for your product or service. Marketing for services is different than marketing for products. Make sure you ask the right questions of your marketing consultant to insure they understand your industry and your business. Take the first year as your test and analysis of your plan. At each quarter evaluate how the plan is working. You can tweak the plan based on your initial goals and how the plan is developing throughout the year. |
