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Planning your Marketing – Part One

This was inspired by a recent discussion on LinkedIn that asked how people tracked their sales opportunities. It seems a large number of homeworkers use Excel as their main tool, as it is simple to use and most people will have it anyway as part of Microsoft Office. One person then asked if anyone used Excel for marketing planning.

Being the generous and helpful person I am, I asked if she would send me her spreadsheet so I could see if there was anything that could be done to make it a better tool for her.

Cramming all functionality onto one worksheet is always going to make things a little difficult. A quick exercise into separating out the functionality into multiple worksheets (budget, actual spend, tasks etc.) allowed a much clearer picture of what is happening/needs to happen and the performance of her marketing.

I will be following up in a couple of months to see what has happened.

Anyway onto the main subject – Marketing planning

There are two ways to approach your marketing planning and your budget planning:

1. Start with a budget number and work down until you’ve planned to spend all the money you have available – discussed today
2. Work out the activities you need to do in order to achieve your goals for the year.  – next week

Nearly two fifth’s of SME’s have a budget of less than £10,000 for 2012[1] so it is vital that the budget is used wisely so lets look at the pros and cons of the different approaches above.

Pros of starting with a budget number

1. it makes sure you don’t exceed your budget
2. your CFO/accountant knows what they need to put aside each month

Cons

1. This approach doesn’t take into account your business goals
2. You may miss out marketing activities that could give greater returns simply because your budget has run out
3. It is more likely to encourage you to do low cost activities rather than high value ones
4. It is likely to be inflexible, even if more revenue starts to come in regularly
5. You’re letting the accountant win!

Next week we’ll look at an alternative approach; that of doing the planning and then discussing it with the numbers guys to see what can be agreed. As much as we’d all love to simply carry out the plan, the accountants sign the cheques usually and you can spend the money if they aren’t going to sign!

& the goose is getting fat……….

But if you rely on the festive season for a significant part of your annual revenue, you better be in the final stages of planning your marketing campaign to attract customers.

Decision-makers are now returning from their Summer holidays and will be planning what  they’re going to do over Christmas.  If you’re in corporate catering, venue hire, event organising or people photography, the phone should start ringing very soon.

If not, what do you need to be doing to get it ringing?

1. Have you spoken to everyone who bought from you last year?  They already know the quality of the work you can deliver and, if they liked it, should be considered good opportunities.
2. How are you communicating with everyone who talked to you last year, but didn’t buy? They may have used a competitor last year but they may not have been completely happy with the service they received. If you time things right you could poach a few additional clients from your competitors
3. What are you doing to make more people aware of your services? Without awareness there cannot be any interest or sales opportunity
4. Is your website updated to show the seasonal services you provide?
5. What evidence is online that demonstrates how great a job you did last Christmas for your clients? Case studies and testimonials are a big help for people trying to decide who they should talk to and buy from
6. Have you considered Google Adwords to generate new opportunities.  For seasonal marketing, this can be very effective

Just a few questions for you to consider in order to make sure that your marketing generates the Christmas sales you are looking for

I hope this helps

Business decision-makers are back from their holidays: is your marketing ready?

For many businesses the months of July and August are their quietest, in terms of new sales, even if it’s a busy period for delivering.  The reason generally given is that most decision-makers are on holiday and so not there to start looking, to meet sales people or to make the final decisions.

The question now is: are you, and your marketing, ready for the new business season?

The schools around me go back a week today so you’ve got a little time left, but not much.  There will be some decision-makers who will be about to go on holiday (if they haven’t got school-age children) as bookings are that much cheaper, but that only adds another couple of weeks before the Autumn business season is in full swing.

So:

• Is your website up to date?
• Are you consistently blogging?
• Do you have plans in place for your social media activity?
• Have you planned your special offers to draw in the interest?

Just in case you haven’t here is a little information for the future:

• School dates for Surrey schools (other counties will vary slightly)
  • Autumn Term 2012
    • 4 September to 21 December 2012
    • Half Term from 29 October to 2 November 2012
  • Spring Term 2013
    • 7 January to 28 March 2013
    • Half Term from 18 February to 22 February 2013
  • Summer Term 2013
    • 15 April to 24 July 2013
    • Half Term from 27 May to 31 May 2013
• My phone number: 07770 970 557