So far in this series we have:

• Identified whether our ideal client has changed over the last year;
• Set our goals for our business;
• Tweaked our product and service offerings to align with our ideal client;
• Determined our differentiator and reviewed our messages to ensure we are communicating it effectively;
• Reviewed our marketing content for consistency and accuracy;
• Evaluated our marketing results to determine what’s worked and what hasn’t;
• Assessed our online reputation to see what is really out there.

Armed with this information, we can now put a marketing action plan in place that will grow your business and achieve the goals that you set for yourself. I want to emphasize the word action because a marketing plan that sits in a drawer will not help grow your business. The marketing action plan sets priorities and dates on all your marketing activities to ensure they get done.

Where Do We Start?

In a previous post, I talked about the strategy / goal / tactic hierarchy where you take each goal you want to achieve and map the marketing strategies you will use, the tactics within each strategy and the associated materials needed. By laying out your plan this way, you can see where strategies and tactics may benefit multiple goals and what resources you may need before you can execute the strategy. To get started, download my marketing plan template at Masterful Marketing or on my Facebook Business Page and use that to help you decide what to put into motion. Start with what has been working and include that. Then look to define new activities that may have an impact on increasing your visibility and attracting your ideal client.

You also need to add the who, when, why and how much information for each activity:

• Who is going to do it? You or can you outsource?
• When does it need to get done?
• Why are you doing this activity? Is this activity relevant?
• How much does it cost in both money and time?

Make Your Plan Actionable

In order to make sure the when happens, lay the activities out in your calendar. If one of your activities is to begin blogging to develop credibility and awareness, decide how often you will write, when you will actually do the writing and create a list of topics that you can draw on when you need get writer’s block. Then schedule your time to accomplish this task. If you are giving a talk, not only schedule the actual time of the event, but also schedule time for you to prepare. If you really need help getting the tasks done, add the tasks to your to do list with a completion dates. I would schedule no more than 3 months at a time as you may need to adjust your activity level based on how your marketing is working. And remember to treat your appointments to market your business as seriously as you would treat a client appointment.

Laying out a calendar has several benefits:

• Seeing the time blocked off will make it easy to see whether you have over committed your time.
• Scheduling the activities in your calendar raises their level of importance.
• Having a schedule makes it far more likely that marketing will become a habit.

The key is to get started now. Remember that it takes time for marketing to work so the longer you wait, the longer it will be before you see any tangible results. Be realistic, be ready to adapt and create a marketing system that works for you so you can consistently market your business for the best results. Remember that your plan doesn’t need to be perfect, but it does need to happen.

What marketing activities are you putting into action in the next 30 days?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Marketing Action Plan is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

I often notice that many small business owners treat marketing like something that can be turned on and off. I see this happen especially when the economy is soft. The key indicator is that I get unbelievably busy because businesses decide they probably should market to try and find new customers.

The good news is these businesses seek out help, looking for someone to guide them in their efforts so they achieve success. But for every one business that calls me or another marketing expert, there are many that try what I’ve called the “Chinese Menu” approach to marketing – trying to mix and match disparent marketing activities – and their business will get busy again. Some call it the “binge marketing” approach. In either case, all you get is a bad case of heartburn and not many additional clients.

Unfortunately, that belief is the demise of many small businesses.

Effective small business marketing is not an activity to be done only when things get quiet, but should be constantly and consistently happening in your business. Marketing needs to be a continuous activity whose activities feed off each other, ensuring your business stays top of mind to your current customers and new prospects.

In addition, stopping and starting marketing interrupts the process. Marketing takes time to take effect and when you shut something down, it is really hard to kick it back up. Plus stopping and starting marketing doesn’t give you enough data to know whether something is working or not. The key is to put a marketing effort in motion and let it run, evaluating the outcome and tweaking the tactics when need be. Starting and stopping marketing activities is guaranteed to give you less than stellar results.

Benefits of continuous marketing:

• You build awareness and brand differentiation for your business by being visible to your prospects and clients;
• You establish a solid reputation for your business by marketing your expertise through articles and blogging;
• You distinguish your business from the “competition” by staying visible and promoting your expertise;
• You can evaluate your marketing efforts by the results you are seeing in your business. If they work, keep doing them; if they don’t work try something else.

Marketing takes a little time each week, ensuring your business stays visible to your clients. Plan to network, blog, write an article, update your profiles on LInkedIn and Facebook, contribute to a Twitter conversation, add some additional Internet marketing activities, be active in social networks and ask a client for a reference or testimonial. All of these take a few minutes to a couple hours but the payoff can be substantial.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

When Do You Need Marketing? is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

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.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Staying on Track with Marketing is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.