Strengthen Your Marketing Messages

This is post five in the year end marketing review series to help you get ready for the new year.

If you have followed the previous posts in this series, you should know if and how your ideal client profiles have changed, what makes you different and why you delight that ideal client. Now we need to look at our core marketing message that should be woven throughout all of your marketing materials. Is your marketing message the right one for your market, aligning with your ideal client’s needs and telling them why they should do business with you loud and clear?
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What Makes You Different?

This is post four in the year end marketing review series to help you get ready for the new year.

Whether you discovered that your ideal client has changed or not, reviewing what makes you different is something you should be doing on a regular basis because you need to be sure that what you think makes you different continues to be true as new competitors enter the market. With so many people offering the same products and services, you must create a long term competitive advantage that keeps you ahead of your competition. Being different gets you noticed, creates value and is easily remembered.

Determining what really sets you apart from others in your field and communicating it effectively is not an easy exercise. As business owners, we think we need to have something complex and difficult in order to be valued by our clients when in reality, it may be something we find easy to do but our clients find amazing. We are taught to believe that things of value have to be hard or complex. Just because these things we do are easy for us does not mean they are easy for others. You need to become consciously aware of this value you provide and use it to your benefit.
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Defining Your Products and Services

This is post three in a series that discusses your year end marketing review to help you get ready for the new year.

In part 1, we reviewed whether we were now focusing on a new and most likely, better ideal client. Next, we reviewed our goals to be sure they aligned with your business vision. Given this information, we will evaluate all of our marketing activities to make sure everything we do will help us reach this ideal client.

Do your products and services appeal to your ideal client?

Pricing and packaging your products and services correctly for your target market is one of the more powerful marketing activities that you can do. If your ideal client has changed, you need to review your business model to be sure your offerings are aligned with their needs.
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Reviewing Your Goals

This is the second post in a series that discusses your year end marketing review to help you get ready for the new year.

Your goals can deal with many different elements of your business. You can have goals to drive more business from information products, generate better quality inbound leads, increase the awareness of your brand, drive more visitors to your web site or get more repeat clients. The primary purpose for setting goals is to guide your efforts and measure their success.

Regular review of your goals should be something you do more often than once a year, but now is as good a time as any to take a look. Reviewing your goals is not about looking back but about seeing if your goals are moving you forward. It is also not an exercise where you beat yourself up for not getting them done! The review is to determine which ones you accomplished and which ones you didn’t and why.
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Small Business Marketing Review

This post is the first in a series that will discuss your year end marketing review to help you get ready for the new year. By the end of the series, you should have the information you need to create a basic marketing plan.

During the last month of the year, I always like to take some time to review my business results and my marketing efforts over the past year so that I can adjust where necessary and be ready to hit the ground running when the new year rolls around. The following are the areas that I look at to see what stays, what goes and what needs a bit of tweaking.

• Current client profile – has it changed?
• Goals – which ones did you accomplish?
• Service or product offerings – do they need to be redefined?
• Why people hire you or pay for your services – what makes you different?
• Messages – do they still work?
• Website content and other marketing materials – are they consistent?
• Marketing activities for the past year – what worked and what didn’t?
• Online reputation or presence – do you exist?
• Action plan – what activities will you be using to market your business?

Let’s start at the beginning and work our way through the list.
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