 Cleaning
Up Your Marketing
By
Charlie
Cook Copyright © 2004
Has your once well-organized marketing
plan come to resemble the jumble of stuff in your closet (not to mention
the garage and the attic)? If you are like most people, each time you come
across a new marketing idea you try to adopt it and add it to your existing
approach.
Strategies and tactics tend to accumulate and linger even when they may not
be working as well as you'd like. Like the ill-fitting clothes that accumulate
in your closet or the broken tools still in the garage, they are hard to
get rid of, whether because of habit, emotional attachment or just plain
not getting around to cleaning them out.
To improve your marketing, you'll need to clean out some old ways of working.
While I don't want to get anywhere near your closet, and in fact I could
use some help with mine, I can show you how to clean up your marketing plan
so you're ready to take advantage of the New Year to grow your business.
Cleaning Up Your Marketing Plan Every morning my friend Michael Angier of
SuccessNet.org sits down at his desk and asks himself the following three
quëstions about his business.
1. What's working?
2. What's not working?
3. What can I improve?
You may not want to review your marketing plan five times a week, but it
is a good idea to do it at least once a year. So take out your pencil or
fire up your computer and assess your marketing plan:
Your Marketing Plan
1. Is your plan working?
2. Do you have a well defined marketing strategy that helps you achieve the
three phases of marketing: Getting Attention, Positioning, and Selling?
3. Do you need to write or rewrite your marketing plan?
4. Do you need additional information or coaching to complete your marketing
plan?
5. What are you going to do to improve your marketing plan?
Getting Attention
6. Does your marketing message prompt prospects to contact you?
7. Do your ads, letters, and web site motivate prospects to contact you?
8. What are your conversion rates?
9. What steps can you take to improve them?
Positioning
10. What are you doing to establish your credibility with prospects, to help
them know and trust you?
11. Is it working as well as you'd like?
12. What could you improve?
13. Is the value of your products and services clear to your prospects or
do they quëstion you about merits and price?
14. Want to learn how to ensure that your prospects understand the value
of your products and services?
Selling
15. How successful are you in selling, that is, in getting commitments for
everything from appointments to orders? 16. What's your conversion rate of
prospects contacted to clients and customers?
17. Do initial s/ales generate repeat s/ales and referrals for years to
come?
18. Want to learn how to generate more s/ales from each client?
Evaluating Your Marketing Plan
Use Michael's three quëstions to summarize your comments about your
marketing plan and your success in getting attention, positioning and
selling.
1. What's working?
2. What's not?
3. What do you want to improve?
The hardest part about cleaning out your closet, attic, garage or your marketing
is getting started. It may be time to straighten up or throw out some of
your old marketing strategies and tactics and replace them with new more
effective ones. Start 2005 with a well organized marketing plan, one that
helps you Get Attention, Position your products and services and Sell and
you'll find your business growing in leaps and bounds in the coming year.
About the Author:
2004 ©
In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.
The author, Charlie Cook, helps service professionals and small business
owners attract more clients and be more successful. Sign up for the
Frëë Marketing Plan eBook, '7 Steps to get more clients and grow
your business' at
http://www.marketingforsuccess.com |
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