Staying on Track with Marketing

Things have gotten really crazy for me lately and some of you may be wondering where I’ve been. Like many of you, as the year progresses, new clients come on, old clients come back and all of a sudden we’re overwhelmed. What happens is we start having trouble staying the course with marketing. 

Since we need to remain visible to our prospects, we have to make sure our marketing doesn’t losing steam. Here are some tips to regroup and get you back on track:

• Concentrate on one marketing tactic at a time rather than bounce from idea to idea. Don’t be tempted to constantly follow the “marketing idea of the day” and ignore a program that is working. Keep evaluating how each tactic is performing, improve it if need be and use it consistently. With your limited marketing resources, stay focused on the plan until you get a result – whether good or bad.
• Schedule a marketing appointment with yourself each day. Whether it is going to a networking event, writing a press release, developing your newsletter or writing a blog post, make time in your calendar to work on your marketing.
• Don’t get overwhelmed with all that you should be doing. Break your marketing into small, doable pieces and take it one step at a time. For example, rather than execute a large direct marketing campaign, break it into pieces and send out several smaller mailings so you have time to follow up. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have time to do it all. Be selective and work on those activities that work for your business.
• Spend some time assessing how your marketing activities are working. How many new clients have you gotten from your activities? Are people finding your web site or blog? Look at the stats on what keywords people are using to find you and make note. If you don’t have the capacity to do this yourself, make sure the people you have hired can provide you this information. Marketing takes time, but you can track your progress if you have the right tools.

Don’t let marketing fade away as the year progresses. Create a one page marketing activity summary and keep it visible. If things have changed and you adjusted your activities, update the summary to keep you moving ahead. Remember, your marketing plan is a living document and adjustments will happen throughout the year. That is not failure. Ignoring marketing is.