Putting a Method to the Marketing Madness
The new year is here and its time to get your marketing plan of
attack into gear. Market planning has a lot in common with
financial planning. You must first decide what your goals are,
who your target market is, how you will reach your targets and
set up a long-term plan to reach your target markets.
What are your goals and who is your target?
Before you can begin a marketing campaign, you need to know what
your goals are and who your ideal client is. How many ideal
prospects would you like to add to your client base?
Let's say that you want to add 35 new clients to your roster
this year. You have decided that the ideal client has a yearly
income of $100,000 and $500,000 in investable assets. This is a
broad look at the type of client you want to attract. What other
traits can be added to help decide who your ideal prospect is.
Do you want a prospect who you will have to spend a great deal
of time educating on benefits of financial planning? Do you want
a client who wants full details of their financials on a
quarterly basis, or someone who just wants to know if they are
on target to meet their financial goals?
At this point you have decided that your ideal client is someone
who has a household income of $100,000 per year. The client has
investable assets of at least $500,000, married, planning for
college education of two or three kids, also planning for
retirement for both partners. They have an understanding of the
need for financial planning, implementing the plan and needs to
be kept informed but not educated. They also do not need a
detailed report on their finances, but an overview of how their
finances are being invested and whether or not they are on
target to reach their goals.
Deciding where your market is and how to reach your market:
You know that the type of clients you are prospecting for lives
in affluent neighborhoods, children attend prestigious private
schools and belong to certain country clubs and civic
organizations. You quickly decide that cold calling will not
reach this group of prospects. You think about the marketing
activities you would like to do and are most likely to do.
Through careful thought and research, you have decided to use a
combination of networking, referral partners, writing articles,
brochures, writing reports, seminars, speeches, newsletters,
postcards, company website, and community involvement.
Now that you have decided what kinds of marketing activities you
want to pursue. You decide to do a breakdown of how often you
will do each activity for the year. Your breakdown looks
something like this:
Networking events: Attend one per a week Cultivating Referral
Partners: Host a breakfast or lunch meeting twice a month
Writing Articles: Write and publish an article once per month
Brochures: Create brochures once a year Writing Reports: Write
an in-depth report once per month Seminars: Host a seminar at
least eight times a year Speeches: Give at least six speeches a
year Newsletter: Create a monthly newsletter Postcards: Send out
postcards every three weeks Company Website: Update your website
with articles, reports, white papers or case studies twice a
month Community Involvement: Become a sponsor in two large
events per year Press Releases: Sending press releases to tell
of news concerning my business or a free booklet that is being
offered.
Creating your long-term plan to reach your market:
You have figured out who your market is, how you will try to
reach your market. Now that you have a plan on ways to reach
your market, you have to decide on a schedule to implement the
plan. You start by creating a spreadsheet with each month
listed. You then break the month down by weeks. You start
placing events into each month, trying to place at least four
events in each month. For Example: January Weeks 1 through 4 -
Develop company brochures Week 1- Send newsletter to current
email list Week 2 - Send Press release offering a free booklet
geared toward my ideal prospects. Week 3 - Write article for
publication Week 4 - Go to a networking event Week 5 - Host a
seminar on a topic of interest to your ideal prospects, give
away a copy of my free booklet to attendees.
February Week 1 - Send newsletter to current email list, follow
up with seminar attendees. Week 2 - Host a lunch to cultivate
Week 3 - Send out a postcard to prospects reminding them of a
service that I offer that would be especially helpful to them
and referring them to my website. Week 4 - Give a speech at a
local civic group
Then you continue to create your plans for the rest of the year.
You can also add much you feel you may need to budget for the
activities. Your plan should be flexible, it is a guideline. It
will help you know what you should be doing at any given time.
Don't hesitate to change it when it needs to be changed, but
don't change things to quickly. Make sure you have an idea of
how the activity is really working before you change things.
Tracking results and hitting your goals:
It is also important to track your results. If you do a press
release and offer a booklet, track how many people call and
request the booklet, find out how they found out you were
offering the booklet.Track how many invites you send for your
seminars, how many people sign-up and how many people actually
attend. Track how many prospects that you contact throughout the
year that actually becomes a client. How long did you have to
contact the prospect before they became a client? What was the
deciding factor that made them decide to become a client? Track
how many people visit your website. How many people downloaded
your reports, signed up for your newsletter. Constantly tracking
your results will let you know what activities are bringing you
business and what activities are a waste of your time. When it
comes time to do next's years marketing plan, you will know what
activities to continue and discontinue.
Marketing is a cycle. You must first understand what you
marketing activities need to do for you. Are you trying to
increase your prospect base, follow up with prospects, get a
meeting, close a sale? Gear your activities to what you are
trying to do and focus on those things. When you increase your
prospect base, move onto following up, then move on to getting
the meeting, then move onto closing the sale, then start all
over. NEVER stop marketing, if you want to keep doing business.