Why Your Marketing Plan Depends on Goals

If you haven’t put together your 2008 marketing plan, it’s not too late. In a post from the Vista Viewpoint blog, Year End Marketing Planning, we talk about a few tips on how to use what happened this past year to help you plan for the next 12 month.

But if you haven’t done a lot of marketing in your business or are starting a new business, you will need to spend some time on developing your purpose, vision and goals.

The Purpose

You need to do is understand the purpose of your business. Why did you start your business in the first place? What mark are you trying to leave on the world by being in business? Do you love what you do? Do you get up every day looking forward to your work?

The Vision

What is your vision for your business? Where do you want it to be in 3 to 5 years? A vision statement is a statement about what you want your business to be. It is your dream of the future without respect to current resources. It inspires, gives you direction and keeps you on course.

Goals

Goals are the critical piece of the marketing plan. To develop a sensible marketing plan, you need to know what you want to achieve with your business and how you are going to get there (see my post Business Goals Help You Plan Your Marketing). Determine your goals for the year. You can break them into business and marketing goals or just list all goals together. I like to split my goals into both categories because for me, business goals are those things I want to do to change my business. Marketing goals are things I do to keep me in business and need to be the quantifiable, measurable targets I aim for, such as number of new clients, percentage increase in unique visitors to your web site or number of speaking opportunities you want to achieve. Include a mix of financial goals, such as amount of income, number of sales, and amount of profit, and non-financial goals, such as books you will read, networking events to attend, and number of articles published. For more information on

Understanding these three elements of your marketing plan helps you focus on the important activities that will help you get where you want to be at the end of the year. Without goals, you run the risk of wandering aimlessly throughout the year, unfocused and possibly missing opportunities that could elevate your business to a new level.