5 Steps to starting your 2014 Marketing Plan
- Take the first step and DECIDE if you want help – If your staff lacks experience, isn't qualified, or has no time, and you can’t afford to hire and train new staff, consider outsourcing.
- RESEARCH your market – Even for the smallest marketing efforts, knowing your market is essential to making informed decisions.
- CREATE your plan –Whether it is a full blown marketing plan or you’ve decided to take simpler steps, each campaign needs a plan. Be creative and aggressive but make sure your plan is achievable.
- IMPLEMENT the campaigns – Start at the beginning and move forward with your ideas. Most aspects of your business success depend on the execution of your marketing. Marketing functions go beyond sales and advertising into areas that affect all aspects of a product's characteristics and how it gets to market. This is the most time consuming and difficult part of this process. Consistent, regular, and reliable messages are essential to positive results. Whether you start small with a simple email marketing campaign or social media campaign, or you start with a comprehensive marketing plan, the importance of a marketing plan to the success of your business is immeasurable, or rather very measurable.
- TRACK the results and REEVALUATE the plan – Even the best laid plans are inadequate without a tracking and measuring system. Not every marketing campaign you launch will be successful. You need a way to determine which marketing efforts are wasting your time and money. Therefore, track marketing efforts so you can reinvest more of your budget into campaigns that generate positive ROI. Don’t throw away your money on ineffective marketing.