Marketing Action Plan

The final post in the year end marketing review series to help small business owners get their plan ready to kick off a successful year.

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. Read more on Marketing Action Plan…

Marketing Activities – What Worked?

Whoo-hoo! Seven down and two to go in our year end marketing review so we’re ready to hit the ground running! Hope you’ve found these useful so far!

Do you regularly review the results of your marketing efforts? Is your marketing plan a living document that ebbs and flows with what is happening in your business? As a small business owner, you should try to stay aware of how your marketing is working throughout the year so you can make adjustments as the need requires.

Read more on Marketing Activities – What Worked?…

Marketing Content Review

This is post six in the year end marketing review series to help small business owners get ready for a wonderful new year.

Most small businesses have a Web site and some marketing materials that most likely were written a few months ago but maybe longer. Keeping your content fresh, whether it is on your Web site pages, blog or printed materials is important to establishing your credibility and a consistent brand.

Read more on Marketing Content Review…

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?

Read more on Strengthen Your Marketing Messages…

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.

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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.

Read more on Defining Your Products and Services…

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.

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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.

Read more on Small Business Marketing Review…