Just like I just wrote about a system to keep up with your social media activities, you need a marketing system for your business as well. Here’s a start to the system I use to market my business on a regular basis.

• Book appointments with yourself – Timeblocking is not just marking the time in your calendar. Actually book a meeting as you would a client, setting the time, agenda, and place. Make the meeting an hour or less and assign a topic to work on. Make these appointments at the same time so they become a habit.
• Spend a few minutes on marketing every morning over coffee – While the coffee is brewing and you are enjoying the first cup, take 30 minutes and work on one piece of the marketing plan. Draft a blog post. Check your LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter feeds and accept invitations or write a recommendation.  Update your marketing goals. Work on a marketing message that appeals to your prospect’s pain. Evaluate a current marketing program and determine whether you want to continue.
• Spend an hour surfing the Web – Use the web to check out what people are saying about you. Set up Google Alerts for your name, business name and competitors. This helps you easily keep up with how you are being perceived and how your competition is marketing and positioning themselves. Use this information to compare your marketing and messages to theirs and see if you have differentiated yourself from them.
• Engage an accountability partner – working solo can make it too easy to forget to market. Have someone hold you accountable for marketing your business. Knowing you have a conversation every week with someone who will ask what you accomplished helps keep you focused.
• Write down your goals and keep them visible – don’t work on marketing blindly. Have your goals written down with dates so they keep reminding you of what you said you would accomplish this year. Writing things down does make them real.

Try to make marketing a habit and treat tasks and projects for your business just like you would treat your list of client work. It’s hard – I know. I need to keep this system visible to me as well. By making marketing a priority item on your to do list, the more likely you will get them done.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Working On Your Business 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+.

Four Stages of the Marketing Execution Process

If you haven’t had a marketing plan in the past, we’ll start with a review of last year so we can see how you did. Can you directly attribute revenue to your marketing activities? If so, which ones gave you the highest return? Don’t know? That’s ok – we’re looking forward to the New Year, not into the past. From this point on you will plan, execute, track and measure on a regular basis so that there are no more year end surprises.

Create a simple plan for your business

Having a great marketing plan is critical to its success. You absolutely must do it before you begin marketing. It’s not difficult or time consuming to write a marketing plan – just a few hours is all you need. Register for a simple worksheet to help you get started. If you download this worksheet, I’d appreciate your feedback in the comments section.

Execute the activities consistently

A great marketing plan is done to guide you in your marketing activities. The plan helps you understand how each activity works in synergy with your other marketing activities and it ensures you give a consistent message throughout. But the real key to success in marketing is the ability to execute the plan, working each activity until you have attracted more clients than you can handle. I’ve seen many businesses put together a plan but then don’t follow through with the plan, wasting so much time and missing real opportunities to build a successful business.

Develop a system for tracking marketing effectiveness

Determine now how you will track sales against the activities. Make sure you always ask how someone find you. Put it on your web site as part of the contact form. Have your office manager ask everyone who calls. Use the online tracking mechanisms available with Google Adwords and Yahoo Search. Knowing what’s working and what’s not will help you make budget decisions when you get an opportunity and you need to “find” some money in the marketing budget.

Measure

Review at least quarterly to see how your activities are working. I wrote a more lengthy post on this subject a few weeks ago so I won’t go into great detail. However, it’s important enough to remind you to be aware of where and how you spend your marketing dollar.

Continuous Cycle

Make a resolution this year to plan, execute, track and measure on a regular basis. You’ll find that your marketing becomes more effective and you can make adjustments along the way. Being flexible with your plan helps you take advantage of opportunities without wondering how you will fit it into your budget.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Marketing Execution – Plan, Execute, Track, Measure 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+.