Have You Finished Your 2007 Marketing Plan Yet?

I was shocked!

Recently, I recently attended small business
convention and sat in on a marketing
presentation. The speaker asked the
crowd (about 300 people) to hold up their
hands if they had a written marketing plan.

Out of the 300+ people in the presentation, only
five (5) people raised their hands!

Unbelievable. Only five people had a written
marketing plan. It's no wonder I get calls every
day from dealers and builders complaining about the
slowdown in sales.

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Marketing Plans Increase Sales By 30% or More!
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Did you know studies have shown that businesses with
a written marketing plan experience an average
increase of 30% more in sales as compared to those
businesses that don't have a written marketing plan.

A lot of business owners I speak to tell me...

-> 'I just don't have time to do a plan.'

-> 'To be honest, David, I don't know how to do a
marketing plan.'

-> 'David, I had a consultant do a marketing plan
for me last year but it didn't seem to help my
sales.'

I get all kinds of excuses but none are legitimate.
Your marketing plan is the most important document
in your business.

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Never Delegate Your Marketing Plan to An Employee
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Marketing is the one part of your business that should
never be delegated to an employee (or a consultant for
that matter). It's too important.

Too many business owners see marketing as just
another thing to farm out to their employees. Here's
a good example of what I mean...

Listen, the faster you turn the operations of your
business over to someone else and become the full-
time Director of Marketing, the faster your business
will grow. Period.

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Your Marketing Plan
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You should be developing next year's marketing plan
right now! Don't put it off. Set a deadline date
to have the plan done and stick to it.

Call a meeting for that date with your employees to
review the plan. That way you'll put some pressure
on yourself to get it done on time.

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Break Up Your Marketing Plan Into Mini-Plans
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Make your plan modular. By that I mean, think about
the different areas of marketing that you'd like to
exploit and develop a mini-plan for each.

For instance, consider creating a...

1. Publicity Mini-Plan

2. Advertising Mini-Plan

3. Promo Event Mini-Plan

4. Joint Venture Mini-Plan

5. Referral Marketing Mini-Plan

6. Website Mini-Plan

etc...

By breaking up your plan into mini-plans it makes it
easier to focus on one action plan at a time. Don't
worry how they will all interconnect right now.

Just create your mini-plans by writing down all the
activities that you want to do in each marketing
area. Make sure to break down each activity into
details with deadline dates and costs.

Now that you've created your mini-plans, pull out a
calendar and start attaching the activities to your
marketing calendar.

Now you'll be able to see all the activities and any
overlaps. Your next step is to work out the
activity overlaps and do up a budget.

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Your Marketing Budget
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A common question I get is, 'How much should I spend
on marketing.' I won't address this topic in this
newsletter but I will give you a few thoughts.

First, tally up all your marketing costs from last
year and divide it by the number of ATVs, Snowmobiles,
Dirt Bikes or whatever you've sold.

This figure will give you your 'Cost To Acquire One
Customer.' This is an important figure in that it
is a benchmark for you to use for this year's
budget.

Next, write down your sales goal for this year in
units and multiply it by the 'Cost to Acquire One
Customer' figure. This should be a rough estimate
of your marketing budget.

But if you want it to be a banner year, you'll
probably have to spend more. Most highly successful
small businesses dedicate 6% - 10% of their sales
revenue to marketing.

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"Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan"
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Now that you've created your plan - - stick to it!
If you've planned to spend XX dollars then spend it.
It's okay to be flexible but it's not okay to trash
your plan mid-year.

Stay with it and work it. Implement monthly
marketing meetings in which you review the plan and
follow up on assigned tasks.

Make your plan visible to everyone in your
organization so that they know what's going on and
what to expect.

If you plan your work and work your plan you'll have
a banner year, no matter what the economy is doing.

And if what I saw at the recent convention in which
only five people raised their hands when asked who
had a written marketing plan is really true, you're
going to blow away your competition!

Now, get going and finish plan :-)

To Your Success,

David Carleton