Marketing Plan: What’s New for the Year Ahead

It’s almost time to ring in the New Year!  With all of the celebrations in order, your New Year marketing plan should be in order as well.  Planning is an easy and crucial way to start your year off focused.

If you’re in business a marketing plan is probably something you have seen and or created many times.  It’s probably routine to reference it, and something that you refer even on a monthly basis to stay on track.  If not, that’s okay too. Some business owners stray away from their marketing plan and forget to look at it as often as they should.  The good news is, we have a few tips for you so that you can have a marketing plan worth referencing and you get in the routine of using it as a tool more frequently.

• Take your time when you write your marketing plan. While it may only be a few pages, it should take a lot of thought and planning.    While marketing may seem easy and feel like you can improvise throughout the year, it’s actually extremely important that you plan what tactics you will use and know when and how you will execute them.
• Share the plan with key people in your business. Don’t keep it just to yourself.  While it should be kept rather private, you’ve probably hired a few key people that are helpful in your decision making.  These people are worth sharing the marketing plan with because all functions of your business (finance, sales, etc.) do play a part in the development of your plan.  Without all of the pieces of the business considered, your plan could be missing factors that may affect your plan.  These key people can also share insight and add depth to your marketing plan that you may not have been able to have if you just created it on your own.
• Use you financials. You’re keeping track of business numbers for a reason.  Now is the time to dig deeper into them and see how you can maximize sales and set a budget for an optimized marketing plan.  Knowing what you’re going to spend, and what you can spend is essential to a great plan and will help you when trying to allocate dollars month to month.
• Use it as a motivational piece. There’s nothing better than having something to push you and entice you to have a better, more successful business.  It will also push employees and give them something to shoot for.  They know that they have a business that is structured for an amount of success based on the marketing and they’ll work harder to achieve their expected and personally gratifying goals.

After you’re business has been operating with a set marketing plan from year to year, you’ll look back on them and be able to track the progress that you are making as company.  Essentially you should be expanding and experiencing growth.

Need help with your marketing plan this year?   Reach out to Business House, LLC for your first FREE consultation.  With our talented team of marketing professionals, we’ll be sure to be your one stop shop where you can do it all and do it right!