While most businesses agree that a solid plan is crucial to success, so many fail to create a marketing plan.
Marketing plans are important for many reasons. most notably:
- You understand how many leads you need to generate in order to meet your business goals.
- You understand the costs associated with your marketing campaigns and tactics.
- You have detailed goals that are organized by product, customer segment and/or distribution channel.
- Your competitive advantage, position, and message are coordinated, thus extremely powerful.
- You understand your sales process and the flow of business through your company.
- You have a calendar of events with which, over time, you learn to estimate your cash flow.
- It’s the instructions employees use to know how to implement the long-term goals of the company.
While it might take time to develop a marketing plan, it’s extremely important because it ties all of your activities to tangible goals.
As you go through the process, your team gets to brainstorm all of the possible ways your local business can attract more clients.
Once the marketing plan is complete, you have a road map from where you are to where you want to be. You know what’s at stake, how much it costs, and what you will gain from following the plan.
Additionally, your entire marketing plan for the year has been defined. This means that any spur of the moment, reactionary marketing ideas will have to wait until next year. Which is a great benefit because you can’t track spur of the moment, reactionary marketing, and if you can’t track it, you can’t judge its effectiveness, or duplicate it if you thought it was effective.
A marketing plan is one of the most important strategies you can develop in your local business to coordinate the activities of the company.
Without a marketing plan you are doomed to lead the life of most small to medium-sized business Entrepreneurs.
Most small to medium-sized Entrepreneurs struggle weekly to make ends meet, even though they have excellent products and services to offer consumers. They work long hours. They wear themselves down and risk their health. They spend little time with their families, and they still never seem to get ahead. What they are missing is the understanding of marketing their local business and the value of a marketing plan.
A small percentage of Entrepreneurs do understand marketing and through it have made sizable incomes from their businesses. They have a different quality of life. They spend more time with their family, doing the things that they want to do in their lives. They balance work and play. They are relaxed and easy going, because they enjoy multiple vacations each year and nice things in their lives.
As an Entrepreneur you have two choices. You can either work hard and struggle, or you can enjoy life and relax.
The difference which transforms dreams into reality, pain into pleasure, is marketing.
- Not education
- Not IQ
- Not who you know
- Not how much money you can spend
Marketing!
When you are ready to live the life you know you deserve to live and take your business to the next level simultaneously, contact us.
