Do you have your marketing plan ready yet?

If not, you are not alone.  The majority of business owners don’t even know how to put one together.

To say this is not the ideal, is an understatement – because a marketing plan could determine the success or failure of your business.

As a matter of fact, statistically, business owners who have a marketing plan are 80% more successful than those without one.

If you would like to learn how to put a marketing plan together in one day, I have provided some tips of the most important parts of a marketing plan – that can easily be put together in one sitting.

Will it be equivalent to a having a 40 page marketing plan, and doing extensive market research?  No.  But it will give you an edge that will result in much more money in your pocket.

For a template to design a complete  money – making marketing plan from scratch click here.

How to put your marketing plan together in a day

1. Evaluate last years results. First of all, you need to see what worked and what did not work last year.

Only then can you make the best marketing decisions for the year to come.

The key is to calculate your return on investment (ROI) for each marketing effort you made.  It is as simple as dividing how much money you made by what you spent.

2. Dump your losers, scale your winners. Whatever did really well – take to the next level.  Whatever did not do well – get rid of fast or fix it fast.

And take all the resources from your losers and put it toward your winners.

3. Pick 5 – 10 marketing tools you will use – and stick with it. Decided on what marketing methods (referrals, ads, online, etc.) will work for you and what you can afford.  Pour all your attention and resources into it.

The key is to stay focused on fulfilling your plan – and not letting yourself get distracted by the new marketing “fads” that come out.

4. Make goals and action steps to reach those goals. Set your lead and sales goals – and aim to reach those goals every month.

Make goals for each marketing method you will use so that they add up to the total amount of leads and sales you need monthly.

Set up action steps for each method that will lead you to reaching your goals.

For example, if you have a goal of getting 10 new referrals a month – the action step would be “Ask 30-50 customers for referrals this month.”

Then do everything that it takes to accomplish your action steps.

5. Track and evaluate a lot. Have a system for tracking where your leads and customers are coming from.

This is by far the most important key of effective marketing – because it will tell you if what you are doing is successful or not.

Evaluate what is going well, and what is not going well on a weekly and monthly basis- so that you can make quick changes where needed.

Now, all of the steps above will give you a marketing plan that will provide you a whole lot more customers.

Yet having a marketing plan is not enough. The key to your success lies in taking action and putting your plan to practice.  Therefore the last tip is:

6. Write down 2-3 action steps that you can do every week.

Make sure that you are using the marketing plan as a guide – to not only help you stay focused, but also to tell you week by week what you need to be doing.

As you complete your weekly “To Dos”  you will see more and more results – as time goes on.

In conclusion, successful business owners have a plan.  Unsuccessful people, just stand by and watch the successful people prosper.

Its time that you sit down one day to write  your marketing plan – and by doing so you will write your success story as well.

Will Pena, MBA

Sapientbizsolutions.com

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