Why Crash Diets Don’t Work in Marketing
While your competitors are down the shore eating too much Manco & Manco pizza, what do you think having a marketing plan ready to go for fall will do for your chances to grab market share? Developing a good marketing plan does take some time and research, but it beats eating a steady diet of pasty protein bars and kale salad after the summer’s over.
Marketing plans are the path to increasing your company’s bottom line. They identify and target your market, and guide you to making sound and measurable decisions. They efficiently allocate your resources and spell out a budget.
A marketing plan is a strategic document. It is crafted after understanding your goals and your abilities to reach them. Rather than leaving things to chance and last-minute guessing, a marketing plan gives you a sense of direction and control over how to get there.
It maps out everything – including the strategy for reaching your target audience, which messages, channels and tools you will use.
Marketing planning helps you factor in the day-to-day process of marketing your business. It’s no longer something to be left to chance – or when you and your staff have time. Once agreed upon, the plan spells out the execution of each tactic. It sets targets and milestones as well as the measurements along the way.
Here are the important standards we use when working with clients to develop their marketing plans:
- Write it down. By putting it in writing it becomes a resource to rely on for achieving your goals
- Make it realistic and easy to understand
- Make it adaptable. Business ebbs and flows. The marketing plan should adhere to goals, but also be flexible
- Combine short term and long term goals within the plan. It’s good to see the forest through the trees.
While some people will be watching the scale this fall, scaling the business with a good marketing plan sounds much more appetizing, wouldn’t you say?
