Marketing Plans

Ok we all know we need to create a marketing plan in order to be successful. It's been drilled into us. Maria's book is the perfect step by step approach to do it. If you want to get a bit more in-depth, there are some sites you should check out.

This one has some great info. It's well written. There is one particular part I like entitled 'Positioning – Fighting and Winning the Battle for Your Customer’s Mind.' It's basically about how to stand out from your competition.

I've written different types of plans in the past. I was well-intentioned when I initially put them together, but invariably they ended collecting dust, kind of like new years resolutions. It won't happen this time. I realize that marketing and business plans are crucial to making a business not just survive, but thrive.

Marketing has a beginning and middle, but no end. I will need to constantly revise my marketing plan, tweak and adjust it. It's a never-ending process. Yesterday I was talking to a successful automotive body shop owner. He told me the best advice he could give me was that a business must be measured in order to be managed, and managed in order to be improved. He measures every single aspect of his business. Every phone call, every dollar spent, every change made, every action is documented. That way he knows precisely what he is doing with his business. From that stance, he can tell what is working and what isn't. Say he put an ad in the Yellow Pages and only 20% of his clients come from there. He can go back to his marketing plan and allocate the Yellow Pages budget to a more lucrative type of advertising. It's all in the details. Measure, Manage, Improve ! Marketing plans are one of the tools that allow me to do that.