You will get overwhelmed as your business grows. You will need help as your business gets more complex. Things will fall through the cracks. Starting out, you may be able to do it all but as you grow you will not be able to do it all. When this does happen, and it will, you will struggle to come up with a marketing strategy that consistently achieves the potential of your growing business. Hopefully this article will help you mitigate your difficulties sufficient to building a good workable marketing plan.
Always Look Forward And Come Up With The Goals Needed To Get You There.
You have to take time to plan out what you want, where you want your business to go, and the direction you want to take to get it there. Quick tip: make sure that you put some joy into this step. Get excited about where your business can go and what it can become. You are your business’ ultimate visionary. You have to be the captain of this ship. Your role is captain so you must chart the course and keep the vessel on track to it’s destination.
Developing the marketing strategy needed to get your business to its destination involves having this clear vision of where you are going. You will be developing the steps that need to be taken during this phase of developing your marketing plan.
Key Interrogatives To Include:
- What is the expertise needed to move forward?
- Do I possess this capability?
- What additions to my team do I need to provide the capabilities that I don’t have?
- What role would I like to play in the process?
- What is the vision for the business moving forward?
Knowing What You Don’t Know
Knowing what one’s passion is, is very important. Many articles on business, specially online businesses stress finding a niche that interests you. While that’s important, day to day things like keeping traffic flowing to one’s site, and targetting audiences, are activities that have to be done regardless of your passion.
Assess Your Weaknesses And Things That Don’t Interest You?
So, make sure that the things that are beyond your scope are covered by resources that are very good at those things. Be perceptive about your areas of weakness and make sure that you fill those voids with strong capable people.
Put Controls In Place To Quickly Assess All The Areas Of Your Business
Personality and interests vary. Some small business owners have a passion for hands on delivery, others enjoy focusing on growing their business and coordinating the delivery of products and services.
Some can’t stand being stuck in an office all day; others would prefer never to talk to a client or customer. What aspects of your business are you good at and which do you want to develop further?
Use these control interrogatives:
- What aspects of this task are within my control?
- What aspects are beyond my control?
- Is there a volumetric that can represent what I control?
- Is there a volumetric for what I can’t control?
- How will the data needed for volumetrics be gathered?
- How will the data for volumetrics be maintained?
The Success Of The Plan Is Up To You
This article has provided the 50K foot view of what marketing planning will involve. It’s important to not get bogged down by the details until it’s time for their consideration, while at the same time, devising the plan for when to include those details in the final product. All things at their appropriate time. Your ability to navigate the journey is key.
Knowing what you want and charting a course for getting there involves the many steps mentioned in this article and more. Being able to calmly and confidently take those individual steps is the key to your long term success.