A marketing plan may sound like a lot of added time to your already tight schedule but it truly can save you time. You don’t have to scramble each month or week of what you want to focus on or talk about for your clients. You can plan quarterly or yearly and prepare to always be flexible because an event, topic or product may come up you weren’t planning for. What is great is then you can put that in and push your plan out more which makes you even more proactive.
Are you sure?
Yes! We know you always hear large businesses having a marketing plan but even a small business, whether you work from home, in your car or in a customer facing office, you need a marketing plan.
Print out a monthly calendar, use a notebook, napkin from your favorite lunch spot or a document on your computer.
Where to start?
Look at your months, are there holidays you want to celebrate or recognize with your customers? Are there certain seasons your products do better than others? Do you have a new product or offering coming out you want to highlight? Are there certain questions you get that you can create a series on social media to discuss or some type of social-distanced event?
And then…
Start writing (make sure to use a pencil for those changes, trust us, it will happen) or typing up where your focus is. If you are going to plan quarterly, do it a month to a month in a half before your next quarter. If you are going to do it yearly, do it about 2 months before your year starts.
Then refer back to it weekly and incorporate or plan accordingly to what you are planning. You will start to build the habit of referring to your calendar and plan as well as that repetitive review will stick in your brain and will be easy for you to recall as needed.You will find you start thinking about how to fit in different ideas that come to your mind.
This doesn’t have to be just for social media, it can be for all areas of marketing (events, employee recognition, product sales, etc).
And it’s not too late so get to work and continue to make this year great!
