A
Marketing Plan Budget Can Help You Stay On Track.
By: Susan Carter
www.businessknowhow.com
Answer this question: When you plan a vacation, one you’ll take by
car, what do you do first?
Most people determine three things: where you are going, how you’re
going to get there and how long it’s going to take. You use a map to
determine a route. You’ll decide how far you need to travel each day
to successfully reach your destination. You may even decide which
hotels you’ll stay in along the way and budget for gas, meals and
entertainment. And all these decisions are put down on paper so you
can monitor each leg of the trip for successful completion.
You can also change parts of the plan as you go along – if you’re
having more fun than you expected in one place, extend your stay. If
an event isn’t all you hoped it would be, then leave early. If you
encounter road construction, reroute. Even though you change your
mind, the directions – and the map – help you to quickly adjust and
route a revised course. If you write it down, map it out and refer to
it along the way, you have more time to simply enjoy the scenery!
Now answer this question: How many of you have a written marketing
plan budget for business success?
If you’ve got one – bravo!! If you don’t have one, you’re in the 98
percent of all the entrepreneurs I’ve ever asked.
Why is it that we’re willing to take the time to map out directions
for getting from point A to point B when we’re driving our cars to a
specific destination, but we’d rather “wing it” when it comes to
driving our businesses to success?
It boggles the mind.
Here are the two things I can just about guarantee for the future of
your business:
Having a written marketing plan budget will continually lead you toward
financial gain.
Not having a written marketing plan budget – or having one you keep in your
head – will not.
In the true spirit of my ever-continuing mantra of finding ways to do
more with less, I want to present a perspective for a written plan
that will help get you what you need to move you closer to your goals
– in just three pages or less. Here’s the simple four-step outline for
a successful, business-building marketing plan:
Step 1: Choose your destination and mark your checkpoints.
To reach financial goals, you first have to have them!
How much do you want to pay yourself each year? How much business do
you need to generate to be able to write that check? Now, break that
figure down into a monthly figure, then a weekly figure. If it makes
sense for your business, break this down into a daily figure. The more
immediate the goal is, the more likely we are to feel the urgency to
attain it.
For example, if you’re an independent contractor and $150,000 a year
salary seems reasonable to you as you look ahead, what does that mean
to you right now? It means $12,500 profit each month, approximately
$2885 each week, $577 each day (5 business days) or $413 each day (7
days a week).
Are you hitting your monthly/weekly/daily target to ensure that you
reach your yearly goal?
Step 2: Chart the course.
The written marketing plan is established to generate prospects and
clients you need to meet your financial objectives. If you’ve been in
business at least a year, you can create a plan based on previous
results to help you hit your targeted goals. If you’re new to
business, research “norms” and statistics for your type of business to
help establish a starting point.
For instance, if you’re in the service business, what does it take to
acquire a new client? How many phone calls do you have to make? How
many appointments do you need to set? How often do you need to follow
up before you get to “yes”? What type of client generates greater
profit? What type of client is most “typical” or requires less effort?
How many of each type of client do you need to acquire to hit your
daily/weekly/monthly target to stay on your financial track?
What tactics or strategies for attracting new customers have worked in
the past? How many new or recurring customers did you acquire with a
specific promotion? Did you generate interest by giving a workshop or
seminar? What kind of advertising did you do? What new strategies
would you like to try?
Choose precise marketing vehicles you will use, when you’ll use them
(dates and frequencies), the cost of using them and how many sales you
need from each one to break even.
Step 3: Track and log results.
If you don’t know which marketing efforts are working for you and
which are not, how can you possibly determine a better and more
cost-effective plan?
Don’t get caught up in focusing on the ingenuity of a particular
tactic and its potential for gain while forgetting about measuring
actual results. It will cost you money! You must “tag” every effort in
order to measure its results.
For instance, if you get a phone call
from a prospective client, ask the person how he/she heard of you –
from a colleague? Yellow pages ad? Other ad? Directory listing?
Promotion? Seminar or workshop you participated in? An interview you
did with a local radio station or newspaper? Document the answers.
If you do print advertising, mark the ad with a department number or
ID number that responders need to refer to in order to get the
information (or product) advertised.
Tracking results actually lets you SEE what direction your marketing
efforts are currently going and where they need to go to get the
financial reward you seek. And once you can see the “map” to
successfully marketing your business, it will be easier to keep moving
toward your goals.
Step 4: Review and change the plan to get better results.
A great marketing plan is ever-changing. You learn from it, modify it
and re-introduce it.
Using results you get from Step 3, determine if the plan is working or
if it could do better. What profits resulted using each of these
tactics? Which worked best? Can you recreate them? Which produced the
least? Can you modify them to be more effective? What products or
services are drawing the most interest from potential
customers/clients? Should you promote them more heavily? Is there a
specific industry that responds more than another? If so, you can
revise your marketing plan budget.
Is a tactic or strategy costing more to use than the gain you
experience from its use? If so, drop it! Don’t continue to use an ad
that doesn’t produce just because you paid a lot of money to have it
created. Move on. Try something else. Review results and change your
course at every opportunity.
Summary:
Writing an effective marketing plan budget doesn’t have to be a daunting
task. It ’s not for anyone else, it’s for you. Don’t waste your time
with a fancy cover, rambling or self-serving text and an impressive
vocabulary. Forget about grammar and sentence structure – write in
fragmented phrases if you want to. All you need is a clear goal,
broken into specific checkpoints, supported by efforts that you can
track and change as you go.
Put in the effort and you’ll pull out the profit.
Susan Carter is a small business operations and marketing consultant
and author. Her web site is at http://www.successideas.com
