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Marketing Podcast: 2012 Marketing Planning

Friday, January 20th, 2012

For the first “Getting Down to Business” of 2012, Dave Weatherholt and I teamed up to talk small business planning. Dave covered some important financial steps every small business should take, while I focused on marketing tips to get your marketing plan in shape for the coming year. I’ve linked to the entire show, so enjoy an hour of Getting Down to Business!

Listen or download below:

Marketing Podcast: 2012 Marketing Planning

This segment first aired during “Getting Down to Business” on Alaska’s Fox News Talk 1020.

 

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Posted in Business Plan, Marketing Podcasts, Small Business | No Comments »

2012 Marketing Planning – It’s Not Too Late

Friday, December 23rd, 2011

Conventional wisdom says all businesses finished their 2012 marketing plan by November, wrapped it in a bow and are ready to implement come January 1.

I venture to guess that is an overly optimistic perspective for many businesses. In November, most small businesses are striving to finish up the current year in a good state.

In fact, January is a great time to plan for the rest of the year. The previous year’s results are final; holiday vacations are over, and employees are refreshed and ready to dive in.

As you start focusing on the new year, consider these tips in developing your 2012 marketing plan.

Your 2012 Marketing Plan

What do you hope your business will look like in 2012? Understanding your goals is key to developing your marketing plan. If you can answer the following questions, you can plan to succeed:

  • How do you want 2012 to be different from 2011?
  • How do you want it to be the same?
  • Will your market environment change in 2012?
  • Who should be your customers in 2012?
  • Should you offer any new products and services this year to meet those customers’ needs?
  • What are your revenue and profitability goals?

Evaluate your marketing activities from the previous year. Being a spreadsheet fanatic, I make a spreadsheet of all activities, including their cost, metrics and attributable revenue. For instance, with a pay-per-click advertising campaign, your metrics will include how many visits to your website or how many phone calls you received.

Using this information, determine which marketing activities you will stop doing this year. You should stop any activities that don’t help meet your goals or have no hope of being profitable this year. Easy, right?

Now, decide which marketing activities you will continue and if you need any new initiatives or strategies. If you expect 2012 to be quite different from 2011, your marketing activities will very likely change dramatically. Perhaps your goal is to connect more deeply with your local community, so you might change from a strategy of print and TV advertising to sponsoring and developing local events.

Next, consider your marketing “capital improvements”– investments you made last year whose benefits continue into this year. Perhaps you redesigned your website, invested in a CRM system or wrapped your service fleet in new graphics. Based on your goals, are there any large investments you need to make this year?

Taking a look at all the marketing activities that will help you reach your 2012 goals, create a budget and timeframe for implementing them. Determine if you need additional marketing partners or if your current resources are sufficient.

Finally, make sure you actually implement your marketing plan! Get started right away… after all, 2012 is already upon us.

Need help with your 2012 marketing plan? Sometimes an independent assessment can help you prioritize your goals and put things into perspective. I’d be glad to talk with you… just email me at amanda@zooinajungle.com or give me a call at 513.833.4203.

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Posted in Branding, Business Plan, Small Business | 1 Comment »

Marketing Tips: Naming a Business

Friday, May 6th, 2011

When you start a new business or develop a new brand, one of the most important early steps is naming it. A good name tells customers who you are, what you do, and what you can do for them.

If the business name is too generic (think American Business Group or Unified Solutions), customers won’t know what they can buy from you. A generic name means your marketing has to work harder to tell your story, both creatively and monetarily.

Alternately, a too-specific name can limit your future potential. Apple’s iTunes Store was painfully out of date with a business model that evolved to sell so much more than music. The company had to go through the expense and consumer education efforts of rebranding the service as the App Store. Apple still hasn’t solved the naming problem of iTunes, the application a consumer counterintuitively must use to sync the data on her iPhone.

To name a business or brand, the goal is to craft a name that is descriptive without limiting the future- and has good domain name possibilities. Some of my favorites include Fast Company, the magazine for innovative businesses; POM Wonderful, the delicious pomegranate juice, and Chik-fil-a, the chicken sandwich fast-food chain.

Or take the example of the business forclosure.com, which filed for bankruptcy last year. Very descriptive of the path the business took, don’t you think?

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Posted in Branding, Business Plan, Marketing Theory | No Comments »

Marketing Plans for Small Business

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

A marketing plan is the foundation of any small business’s marketing efforts. Your marketing plan should describe and justify big marketing strategies and inform your daily tactical decisions.

At first, completing a marketing plan for your business may seem daunting and time-consuming. In fact, developing and following an effective marketing plan will most likely save time in the long run. It focuses your efforts (and budget) on your business goals and helps you make smart marketing decisions. Without a plan, most business success is left to chance.

There are two variations on marketing plans, a start-up marketing plan and an ongoing marketing plan for established businesses. The Leadership Protocol Institute was kind enough to let me share the start-up marketing plan I developed for them a couple years ago. View or download it below:

Sample Marketing Plan

The sample marketing plan follows an outline that any business can use for their marketing plan, whether it’s for startup marketing or ongoing marketing. There are three basic steps:

  1. Business Goals
  2. Customers
  3. Marketing Activities

1. Business Goals

Before you can reach your goals, you have to define them. Articulating your business goals should be the first section of your marketing plan. Most businesses understand that they need to define their goals for outside audiences, like banks or other funding sources. But it is just as important to define your goals for your own understanding.

A business goal needs a financial component and time limit. Here are examples of clearly-defined business goals:

  • We will increase revenue 30% through increased referral efforts by 2013.
  • We will sell four major accounts and ten minor ones in our first year of business, totaling $1.2M in sales.
  • We will grow profits enough in our three existing stores to open a new one in 2012.
  • Over the next six months, we will increase online sales by 35%.

2. Customers

In the second step to your marketing plan, you learn all about your customers. Who are they? What do they think of you? What do they think of your competitors? Where do they go for information? Where do they shop?

The questions may seem endless, but the answers are crucial. We have arrived at the research and analysis step. You’ll need both quantitative and qualitative research to truly understand your customers. You may know that your ideal customer is a professional mom, aged 30-45, with a household income of $85+, but do you really know her? It’s easier to market to people you know, and you get to know people by talking to them. Your marketing plan definitely needs quantitative research, but it needs qualitative research just as much.

After completing the research and analysis, you may learn more about your business goals. Perhaps they need to be changed, or you learned about a new opportunity, or you simply can add more detail. Circle back to step one, re-evaluate, then move on to step three.

3. Marketing Activities

Finally, we have reached the action step! Marketing activities are simply how you reach customers to get results. This step should be straightforward, since you’ve already defined your business goals and learned about your customers. For best results, plan a marketing calendar, with due dates attached to each activity.

In the sample marketing plan, we learned about the educators who would be our customers. Our main marketing activities involved starting relationships with decision-makers at affluent elementary and middle schools. Once contact was established, we mapped out the content for sales calls, follow-up interactions and mailings.

Look to the Future

Marketing plans are living documents, meant to evolve and grow with your business. If your business goals change, your marketing activities need to as well.  I recommend re-evaluating your business goals, customer knowledge and marketing activities once a year. By tweaking the plan and your approach, you will be more likely to stay ahead of the competition, spot new opportunities and stay fresh in the eyes of your customers.

Posted in Branding, Business Plan, Customers, Small Business | 1 Comment »

The Value of Pricing

Friday, January 7th, 2011

Are your prices too low?

I just returned from a business trip to Israel, where I also had a little time to tour with an amazing guide. He took my companions and me from Jerusalem to the northern part of the Sea of Galilee, relating the biblical and recent history of each place we passed. He took us to places tourists couldn’t ordinarily go. He was charming, funny and extremely well-informed. For logistical reasons, I didn’t find out the price of the tour until the end of the day. I was expecting to pay perhaps $200-500. And I was glad to pay it. I got an incredible education.

His price? $300 a day. Not per person. Per day. My share worked out to $60.

You see, my guide priced his tour based on his costs. He loves to visit Israel, so he charges enough on tours to cover the cost of his airfare. But his pricing should be based on the value to his customers. I felt so bad paying only $60 that I gave him a substantial tip. But if you are a small business selling products or services, it’s very rare that your customers will think to tip you. They assume the price you’ve set out is fair.

So back to my original question- are your prices too low? If you price based on your time and materials instead of the value your customer receives, the answer is “Yes.” If your prices are too low, of course you will be missing out on profit, but there are other, more dangerous consequences as well.

The danger of pricing too low

Customers perceive pricing as shorthand for value. When customers can’t evaluate the quality of a product or service, they let the price be their guide. Diamonds are a good example. Most consumers can’t actually tell the difference between diamonds rated S1 or S2, so they buy based on what they are willing to spend.

If you sell something even moderately complex, it is easy to price yourself under and out of the market. Imagine I knew beforehand that my tour of Israel would only cost $60. I might have opted to do something else, thinking, “How good could it be?”

Determining the price

  • It requires more effort to develop value pricing than cost-plus pricing, but here are some tips for your small business.
  • Competitive analysis. Know what your competitors are charging and price yourself based on your value relative to their offerings.
  • Customer research. Interview past customers to learn what they value about your offerings. If their value seems greater than what you charge, raise prices.
  • Don’t be afraid to go for it. Price increases invariably spark lively and lengthy debate in companies. But most of the time customers hardly notice the increase (unless, as in the case of Wendy’s Junior Bacon Cheeseburger, you try to price well beyond perceived value. Each time Wendy’s charges more than $1, the experiment fails).
  • Calculate your customer’s value. Some companies, especially business-to-business companies, can calculate how much value their products or services will give a customer. Take the time to do it, and share the results with your customers.

Finally, if you are ever in need of a private tour guide in Israel, send me a note. But hopefully his prices will be higher when you write- and the experience will be worth it.

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Posted in Business Plan, Marketing Science, Pricing, Selling | 1 Comment »

Marketing Podcast: Small Business Marketing Budgets

Thursday, December 30th, 2010

Still working on your marketing budget for 2011? Listen to my podcast for some last-minute help on cutting your marketing budget without cutting your marketing effectiveness. Learn what you truly need to spend money on and what you can skip without harm.

Even if your budget is complete, there is still room to cut some fat using my budgeting method (And congratulations for not being one of the procrastinators).

Listen or download below:

Small Business Marketing Budgets

Download the marketing budget MP3 file here. (4.7 MB)

Posted in Business Plan, Marketing Podcasts | No Comments »

Cut Marketing Costs, Not Effectiveness

Friday, December 10th, 2010

As 2010 draws to a close, it’s time to finalize your marketing plan and budget for 2011. For next year, wouldn’t it be great to save money on your marketing efforts while not reducing their effectiveness?

I’ve found that almost every marketing budget carries some unneeded fat. An easy way to increase profitability is to make cuts where they won’t hurt.

Follow these four steps to cut costs, not effectiveness:

  1. Make a list of all marketing activities your business undertakes in a year: trade shows, public relations, advertising, sales trips, customer service training, etc.
  2. Write down how much money you spent on each item in the last year.
  3. Now write down how much revenue you can attribute to each activity.
  4. Do more of those activities that made money and less of those that lose money. Usually, this step is harder than it seems because our marketing plans are full of activities that we do from habit or to satisfy certain people in our businesses. But, for instance, if you lost money on trade shows, you shouldn’t keep investing in them, regardless of a perceived loss of reputation or “getting your name out there.”

This four-step process is simple, if you’re able to track the results of your marketing efforts. But do you have difficulty attributing revenue to each item? Here are some tips to track the effectiveness of your marketing channels in the future.

  • Unique toll-free numbers. There are services available to provide different toll-free numbers and track the calls you receive from each. Assign a different number to each advertising channel: radio, print and web. For more granularity, assign a different number to each campaign type.
  • Website analytics. If you haven’t already, install Google’s free Analytics on your web site. You can track the effectiveness of your pay per click advertising, other sites referring to your site, search terms visitors use to find your site, the geographical location of visitors and more.
  • Ask your advertisers. Advertisers should be able to provide results from your campaigns. Ask them about it.
  • Coupon codes. For any special offer you provide customers, use a unique coupon code you can use to track redemptions.
  • Lead tracking. When you record a new contact, track where the lead came from. Usually people don’t mind being asked, “How did you hear about us?” Store this information on a spreadsheet, contact application or lead manager like salesforce.com.

Some marketing efforts don’t have a clear return on investment, like training your receptionist to help customers find information or encouraging your sales staff to develop better relationships with customers. Fortunately, most efforts that have an unclear ROI also cost the least. And personal interactions have the biggest impact with your customers because customers will remember a phone call with a member of your team more than they will remember an advertisement they saw in the newspaper. When planning your marketing budget for 2011, cut costs, not effectiveness and promote interactions over impressions.

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Posted in Business Plan, Marketing | 4 Comments »

Small Business Marketing Podcast – Implementation Tips

Friday, August 20th, 2010

As I wrote in a recent article on implementing small business marketing strategies, “keeping at it,” is one of the hardest things to do in business. So many distractions and “emergencies” get in the way of fulfilling our well-planned strategies.

In this podcast, I offer several tips for small businesses looking to improve their implementation skills. Listen or download below:

Small Business Marketing Implementation

Download the small business marketing implementation MP3 file here. (4.7MB)

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Posted in Business Plan, Marketing, Marketing Podcasts, Small Business | No Comments »

Implementation means, “Keep at It”

Friday, July 30th, 2010

So, you’ve developed a strategy that informs where you want your company to go. You’ve involved your team in developing and planning for this strategy. Together, you’ve made sure this strategy communicates with customers in ways that are meaningful to them and ensures your company is easy to do business with. You’re probably feeling pretty satisfied with your progress. But your work has only just begun.

The most difficult part of any plan is implementation. It’s not because the tasks of implementation are hard. Usually accomplishing these tasks don’t require great skill or superhuman brainpower. The difficulty arises because implementation requires dedication and tenacity. You have to keep at it. Every day.

For many small business entrepreneurs, this process is boring, and implementation is often cut short, displaced by more exciting strategizing and perceived opportunities. But a small business can never reach its potential without completing the initiatives it starts.

Here are some tips for implementation success:

  • Pay attention to details. Read my recent blog post about a business had a failed advertising strategyby ignoring the details on the printed piece.
  • Develop easy-to-understand success metrics. Know you’re succeeding (or failing) by establishing milestones along the way to your goal. These milestones should have due dates to create a sense of urgency.
  • Hold quarterly or monthly check-up meetings. Grade your company’s success on a regular basis with progress reports on your milestones. Make these meetings short and to the point, or everyone will dread them (don’t you hate meetings that drag on and keep you from work?).
  • Don’t be a roadblock. Often small business owners are the bottleneck in the company’s decision-making process. Decide which decisions you don’t need to make. It will free up your time and speed up your strategy’s success.
  • Use your team’s strengths. If you find it difficult to stay on track, someone on your team likely has strong implementation skills. Give them authority to check in, set meetings and make sure progress is made.

Now use these tips to go forth and implement!

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Posted in Business Plan, Individuals vs. Committees, Small Business | 4 Comments »

Small Business Strategy Podcast

Friday, June 11th, 2010

David Weatherholt of “Getting Down to Business” invited me on the show to talk about small business strategy and planning. Usually, small business owners think of themselves as firefighters, spending their days putting out many small fires and neglecting the important work of developing a future strategy.

But making these everyday decisions doesn’t have to be difficult and time-consuming for small businesses. By developing an effective future strategy, the answers to these dilemmas become clear. I use the example of a fictitious company, SunBurst Coffee, and how they use their “picture of success” to facilitate decision-making.

To hear more advice, listen or download below:

Small Business Strategy

Download the small business strategy MP3 file here. (4.7MB)

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Posted in Business Plan, Marketing Podcasts, Small Business | No Comments »

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