Fail to Plan

Very few business owners have a written marketing plan. Most feel that they know what to do to market their business and taking the time to write a marketing plan just takes them away from running their business. Unfortunately it’s all too easy to make decisions about marketing opportunities that don’t always yield the best return on investment. Not only can you spend money placing ads, but you miss out on better opportunities to promote your business and generate more sales. Having a solid marketing plan will allow you to reap higher sales and stronger profits.There is an old saying that goes, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” This saying is a little harsh, but sadly, the precious marketing budgets of small businesses allow for little error. All too often a few marginal advertising campaigns can deplete a business of its marketing dollars and cause the business to spiral downward. Take for instance Spencer, the owner of a local drycleaner that felt that writing a marketing plan was a waste of time. He felt that he could make decisions about marketing ‘on the fly’ to increase his sales if they were slipping or take advantage of great specials offered by various advertising mediums as they were presented. As you can imagine, when I suggested to Spencer that he needed a marketing plan, I was facing an uphill battle convincing him to allocate some time to this task. Although he was leery of wasting his precious time, he knew he needed help. He had recently bought an ad with a local publication that provided almost no results; in fact he lost money. The sales representative explained that he’d reach a large number of homes for a great rate, that his ad would be full color and that the publication was delivered to 100 of homes. By using 7 core steps of marketing plan development, I helped Spencer evaluate this one ‘on the fly’ decision and we were able to conclude several things, first of which was the fact that everything the friendly ad sales rep said was true. But, why did he still lose money on his ad?Creating a marketing plan does not have to be a daunting task. I helped him demystify the process by first explaining that it would only take the completion of 7 steps. It did not need to be a huge formal document that sat on a shelf like some manual. In fact, it needed to be quite the opposite. It needed to be short and flexible. It needed to have some basic groundwork that was fairly static, but much of the plan would need to be fluid to change with the economy and the marketplace. So we began walking through the 7 steps that soon became his marketing plan. The first step was to analyze his market place and the competition. In relation to the ad we placed, we were able to see that his location, services and pricing was consistent with his competitors, but that he had a clear advantage that he was not promoting – quick turn-around times.Secondly we looked at his sales and his profit margins. After this evaluation, it became clear that focusing on laundered shirts was key in attracting the type of customer who would bring in several items to be cleaned at a time. The ad he placed was promoting dry-cleaning only, not laundry services. In step number 3, we came up with his unique selling proposition, his USP. We created a tagline/motto for his business that communicated his unique benefit to the consumer – which centered on quick turn around. This USP was not featured at all in the ad he had recently placed.Step number four consisted of defining his ideal target market. We determined that his best customer (the ones with the highest profit margin) were people in white-collar positions and that were within a 3 mile radius of his location. The ad that he recently placed was delivered to 100 of the homes just north of his location. These neighborhoods are for the most part, working-class neighborhoods, thus not in need of much dry-cleaning.Step five was an evaluation of a variety of advertising mediums available to him. They included his local newspaper, cable television, local radio stations, co-op mailing packages, and advertising flyers. We evaluated each for several characteristics including; the market they reach, their cost relative to their reach, their timing, etc. When we looked at the publication in which he ad recently advertised. We quickly drew the conclusion that the publication did offer fabulous rates, but unfortunately was not delivered to the right neighborhoods. Therefore, would not make it on his list of advertising mediums to utilize in the future.For step number six we broke out the calendar and started looking at seasons. We determined which months generated the most dry cleaning and which were the slowest. It turned out that Spencer had placed his ad at one of the best times so this did not contribute to the ad’s lack of success. Spencer was already tracking the results of his campaigns, so step number 7 was pretty easy for us to complete. Before he knew it, he had a marketing plan for his business and he could clearly see why the recent ad did not perform well although the sales representative had been truthful in his presentation of the opportunity. He also had a crystal clear vision of exactly where, how and when to advertise to generate the most sales. It wasn’t terribly time consuming, and the plan allowed him to evaluate previous marketing endeavors and will now serve as a litmus test for every new opportunity. This way he will not be quick to spend money on something that sounds good without truly evaluating it based on his specific needs.A simple, but complete marketing plan is literally a road map to success for small business owners. It prevents you from making costly mistakes and points the way to decisions that will net positive results.

Comments? Questions? Email Here

© HowtoAdvice.com

How to Advice .com