As we start planning for 2008, we have to take a good look at our revenue goals, our annual budget and, of course, our marketing plan. We look at our goals to make sure we know where we are going, our budget to ensure we are well funded and our marketing to get us to where we want to go.
This sounds easy, but the field of marketing continues to become more complicated and we need to ensure we allocate our money to the highest producing marketing strategies to give us the highest return on investment for the marketing dollar.
These are the four steps you need to follow to make sure you're allocating your money effectively to reach your target market with the least amount of money invested.
1. Know your target, I know you've heard this more than you would like, but it's true, especially for the small business. Understanding where your target is, what they look like, how they act, how they react, what aspects in your product or service they look for and what their day-to-day routine is like will give you the information needed to create a more powerful marketing message. It also will help you understand where your potential customers gather information and make their purchase decisions, which will make your marketing strategies 100 times more effective.
2. Simplified creative and effective marketing message, By utilizing the information you found by getting to know your customer, you can extract different emotions, benefits and differentiating factors that your customers want, which your company can provide. Finding that perfect simplified message that outlines the core essence of your company will generate a more effective response rate and revenue growth, as well as increase any operational branding techniques.
3. Sweet spot marketing mix, Understand what's out there in terms of marketing. You may be doing print and radio, but could you make more of an impact with pay per click, search engine optimization, viral (word of mouth) events or direct mail? You need to find that sweet spot where advertising media will produce the highest level of profit. There are two ways to find this: hire a professional, or test, test, test. It may take awhile, but once you find it, you will continue to see compounded results.
4. Dynamic evaluation, The most overlooked marketing concept is the evaluation stage. How can you determine what your marketing mix sweet spot is if you don't evaluate? Set up a spreadsheet to continuously track your budget, your expenses, your lead generation and your sales produced by each advertising media. This will give you an understanding of what's working and what's not in your marketing mix. With this information, you can make changes accordingly throughout the year based on actual data.
Follow these four marketing steps and you can plan for calculated growth in 2008. Good luck!
Paul Miser is the president of Miser Advertising and Marketing, a small business marketing company in Carlsbad. He can be contacted by e-mailing [email protected].
This sounds easy, but the field of marketing continues to become more complicated and we need to ensure we allocate our money to the highest producing marketing strategies to give us the highest return on investment for the marketing dollar.
These are the four steps you need to follow to make sure you're allocating your money effectively to reach your target market with the least amount of money invested.
1. Know your target, I know you've heard this more than you would like, but it's true, especially for the small business. Understanding where your target is, what they look like, how they act, how they react, what aspects in your product or service they look for and what their day-to-day routine is like will give you the information needed to create a more powerful marketing message. It also will help you understand where your potential customers gather information and make their purchase decisions, which will make your marketing strategies 100 times more effective.
2. Simplified creative and effective marketing message, By utilizing the information you found by getting to know your customer, you can extract different emotions, benefits and differentiating factors that your customers want, which your company can provide. Finding that perfect simplified message that outlines the core essence of your company will generate a more effective response rate and revenue growth, as well as increase any operational branding techniques.
3. Sweet spot marketing mix, Understand what's out there in terms of marketing. You may be doing print and radio, but could you make more of an impact with pay per click, search engine optimization, viral (word of mouth) events or direct mail? You need to find that sweet spot where advertising media will produce the highest level of profit. There are two ways to find this: hire a professional, or test, test, test. It may take awhile, but once you find it, you will continue to see compounded results.
4. Dynamic evaluation, The most overlooked marketing concept is the evaluation stage. How can you determine what your marketing mix sweet spot is if you don't evaluate? Set up a spreadsheet to continuously track your budget, your expenses, your lead generation and your sales produced by each advertising media. This will give you an understanding of what's working and what's not in your marketing mix. With this information, you can make changes accordingly throughout the year based on actual data.
Follow these four marketing steps and you can plan for calculated growth in 2008. Good luck!
Paul Miser is the president of Miser Advertising and Marketing, a small business marketing company in Carlsbad. He can be contacted by e-mailing [email protected].