3 Steps to Avoid The Marketing Road to Nowhere
The Skinny:
Your business is rockin’, its rollin’, and you’re busy. That’s good! However, before you keep chuggin’ down the marketing road to nowhere; a rough road with ineffective advertising, misguided media management and no plan to boot; take inventory of your operations. You have got to do this step to know if you have any challenges and if your efforts are being effective. What are your goals? How are you getting there? What are you doing every day that moves your plan forward? Stop and answer these questions and your marketing future will be much more predictable.
The Fat:
Step 1: What are our goals?
Our recent experience showed us that without goals, there is no direction in a business. Kiran and I had been plugging away at the development of Mountain Valley Marketing for two full weeks before we sat down and discussed our goals. Now, we know that everything we do is centered around our continuous long-term goal to provide small businesses in the Pacific Northwest with the resources needed to help make their marketing manageable and guide them to digital marketing success. We also came up with shorter-term goals, like reaching 2000 small business marketing with our weekly newsletter in one year, and getting over 500 followers on Twitter in that same time. Lofty goals? You bet. SMART goals? Oh yes. If you need help defining your marketing goals and inbound efforts, start with this great article.
“But I have my goals…now what?” — You
Step 2: How are we getting there?
The roadmap guiding you on the winding road to achieving your goals is called your tactical plan. Everyone’s roadmap to achieving their goals may look a little differently, but the key is to make sure you have one that is effective. Are you consistently following your plan? Better yet, do you even have one?
Our tactical plan to reach 2000 small businesses in our newsletter begins by offering free resources that provide value to subscribers. On top of that, we stand-by our plan to provide consistent small business insight in our blog posts that are then shared on our newsletter. Get the picture? If you need more guidance on tactical marketing plans, get a hold of us so we can do a free marketing audit and help you in the process.
“This stuff is easy, where is the real value at?” — You
Step 3: What are Our Non-Negotiables?
The most difficult part of a plan is always execution. To make your marketing manageable, you must execute. The folks in academia sometimes call this “controlling,” but we refer to it as the non-negotiable standards and performance levels that are mandatory in everyday operations. In other words, what exactly are you doing every day, week, morning, or night to further your tactical plans? These must be non-negotiables. Mountain Valley Marketing non-negotiables are to interact every day with business on Twitter, publish a blog post every single Friday, and send newsletters out every Tuesday and Friday. Your non-negotiables define your business. They define who, what, when, where, and how you interact with your customers. We can all agree that those things are pretty important. Now go out there, and run through these steps with you and your team.
