Planning your Marketing Year

You're ready to plan your marketing year ... but what should you do, and why? And when? The first thing you need is a marketing plan. 

A marketing plan is similar to a business plan. You should have one for each market you target. 

It will talk about your overall goals for that market, each marketing medium you will use (print, direct mail, email, twitter, facebook, blog, web, etc). 

It will outline objectives, plans, ideas and truly define how you will use them. 

It will also identify your major promotions. Under each promo, you note which mediums you'll be using, and how. You will also note your low projection for response, and high projection, plus projected expenses and income. 

A marketing plan looks a little like:

Summary of plan

Specific Goals for the plan

Analysis of how you're currently doing in the area, as detailed as possible

Analysis of Ideal Clients and Current Clients (how do they shop, age, income, sex, household, lifestyle, social media interaction, etc)

Analysis of competition, as detailed as possible (they're marketing, charges, etc)

Strength and Weakness Analysis of your business (where do you realistically think you'll have a hard time, where will it be easy for you)

Your promos and detailed goals, plans etc

Marketing Strategies (what, how, when, why -- FB, twitter, web, etc)

Short and Long term projections, low range and high range, and summary of estimated costs vs. income

**

The calendar then pulls from this.

I recommend using a binder for each target market. Include the marketing calendar for that market, along with the marketing plan, marketing pieces you've used or ones that inspire you, the word bank, the color swatches, and then a benchmark sheet where you can keep track of actual bookings, actual responses to ads, number of inquiries from the promotion, and actual expenses and income, etc. 

Then, have a master calendar (on the office wall) of promotions. It should be color coded (one color per market), and tells you when you'll need photos done for a promotion, when to send out email blasts, when you need to post on FB or twitter, when it needs to go live on the blog, mailers, etc. 

It takes a lot of the guess work out of the year, and helps you focus on doing what you love best. You won't be trying to come up with promotions at the last minute, or try to remember if a promotion worked last year.