7 Questions To Ask Before Writing Your Marketing Plan

Have you ever wondered how to streamline creating a marketing plan?

Can I show you 7 simple things to ask to help speed up creating your next marketing plan?

The first question to ask is, “Do I really need a marketing plan.”
You may not. If everything you are doing to bring in all the business you want, don’t change a thing. Even if you or your staff are bored with it. Let it keep profiting until it stops profiting.

Next ask, “What do I want a marketing plan to do for me and my business.”
Many marketing plans are written as part of a business plan. Also, marketing plans are written when looking for new or more funding. Most marketing plans are created as a road map, a guide to the next 12-18 months of marketing campaigns

Now, “What is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?” Answer in a compelling way, why anyone would choose your products, services or ideas over all the other choices they have, including doing nothing.

Of course, you are making and “Irresistible Offer” every time you are in front of someone. Business and marketing are all about offers.  You give me this and I’ll give you that. Keep in mind that without an offer, no business transpires. Think of the many times you have seen an advertisment or marketing message and couldn’t figure out what was being offered. Don’t make this critical mistake. State exactly what you will be offering in your marketing plan.

OK, “Where is your ideal future client or customer?” Not just anyone, but who is the ideal fit for your products, services or ideas. Where can you find enough of your ideal future clients to be profitable? When you do find them, how much do you know about their hopes, aspirations, desires, fears, problems, etc? Take off your shoes and walk in your future clients shoes for a week and see, hear and feel what they see hear and feel. Then and only then, will you know their real problems.

I’m sure you’ve decided on which, if any, of the many of the different “marketing media options you’ll want to test.” Options like direct respons mailing campaigns, yellow page ads or email marketing. How about tele-marketing, newspaper display ads or Webinars? Networking, Social media marketing or pay-per-click marketing? We could go on and on and on, but you get the idea. Where are you going to spend your marketing budget?

Finally, as long as you are going after new clients, “How are you capturing their personal information?” I don’t mean their shoe size, waist size or height (but you may need them depending on what you are selling). Are you asking for their name, email address and snail mail address? If not, how will you communicate with them in the future?

Now grab a piece of paper and start answering these questions. Doing so will focus your marketing plan and anyone reading it will know exactly the what, where, when, who and how you are planning to market your business.

Ok, I admit it; there are more then 7 questions to answer.
You should have seen the ones I edited out.
I’ve saved them for another article in the near future, so keep checking back.

What to speed up the creation of your advertsing and marketing plan?

Coming in August http://www.FastMarketingPlan.com

Where are your business profits invested?

In the stock market?

Capital equipment?
Gold?

Real estate?
Treasure Chest In the Attic?
Collectibles?
Or, are they invested back into the marketing of your business?

Yes, this is a personal question!

From childhood, we are told not to talk about money with strangers. However, everyone’s goal in investing is to return a profit.

You need to look at your marketing efforts as if they are long-term investments, similar to the other types of investments listed above, because they are.

Like many other long-term investment vehicles, an ongoing marketing strategy usually produces slow, steady returns.

As with other long-term investments, sometimes there is a loss along the way in marketing. However, there also are times when a marketing campaign can produce an instant and fantastic return on your investment.

Like with many other investments, at the end of the year you will know that you spent X amount of dollars on your investment in marketing and received Y amount of dollars in sales and profits.

“Invest in yourself – if you have confidence in yourself.”
- William Feather

You should try to calculate the exact return on your marketing.

Each piece of your marketing strategy involves time, effort, energy, and, in most cases, an investment of actual money.

Do not look at your marketing dollars as a business expense similar to utilities, office rent, or other fixed costs.

Rather, you should view them as an investment in the future success of your business.

The success of your marketing is something that can be measured directly.

Another thing that separates your marketing costs from most of your other business expenses is that you have complete control of the amount that you invest into your marketing program. The amount of time and money that you budget for your marketing programs can be expanded or cut back in response to how well or how poorly your marketing efforts produce the sales or profits that you expect.

It’s nice to know that you have the options of investing more into your marketing program when you discover a winning promotion or investing a limited amount during the testing of a new advertisement.

“Invest heavily in yourself.”
-Unknown

After discovering a winning marketing effort—a profitable success— you can invest more time and money into it safely, knowing that each time you invest X dollars you will earn Y dollars in profits.

One of the best investment decisions that you can make as a business owner is to re-invest in your own business.

How are you investing your profits?

How would you like to be on the top of a best-seller list?

Well, then, why not create your own “best-seller list”
and feature it prominently in your marketing efforts?

People buy what is popular.

The higher up on the best-seller list that an item is—i.e. the more “popular” that it becomes—the more that sales for the item will climb.

For example, if you own an ice cream parlor, create a best-seller list of the most popular flavors of ice cream that you sell.

Post the list at several highly visible locations.
When folks come in, watch the sales of your best-selling ice cream soar!

You can create a best-selling list for any
product/service that you offer.

The power of suggestion helps people who do not know
what they want as well as those who are having trouble choosing what they want.

Many people just can’t make a decision
(sometimes even a life-saving decision), so why not help
them along by showing them what other folks like the best?

Some clients of mine (a husband-and-wife team who run a
carpet-cleaning service) were having trouble selling their service.

We created a best-seller list of the services that
the company offered by using good, better, and best offerings.

This list helped the couple’s prospects to choose the
services that they wanted based on what other people had done in the past.

The sales and profits on these “best-sellers” have increased dramatically.

This means that the sales and profits for the company
are up overall, which was our goal in the first place!

How can you create a “best-seller” list for your products/services?