Everyone is enjoying Christmas and New Year 2013, have you thought about marketing plan 2013?
If you’re a business owner and marketing person like me, you’ll definitely map out next year’s marketing plan.
Does your plan include growing revenues in 2013 with blogging, podcasting or video? Are you looking for some content marketing guidance?
I think it’s really important as we sit on the cusp of a New Year to understand what should be the social media marketing plan, and how beneficial it can be to our overall business. Although email and paper marketing is older now but there is still value in snail mail or paper marketing, but there’s also a great deal of focus online.
I think marketing your brand should be broken down into three separate categories:
1) Social media marketing, where you connect with your audience online;
2) Face to face marketing, where you connect with your clients, meet with them, or hold special events for them;
3) Personal marketing, which includes snail mail (for example, thank you, birthday and anniversary cards), personalized emails (including follow ups) and phone calls (including follow ups)
These are very common tactics through which you can flourish your brand.
Furthermore, you can divide marketing into: a) how you sell your product(sales process) b) the tools which you use to communicate in order to do so (brand touch points).
Sales Process — The components of your sales process determine how you sell from initial contact through close of sale and beyond:
Contact (lead generation): How to find potential customers and create interest in your brand.
Convince (lead conversion): How to convert prospects into customers and “close the deal”.
Close (customer care, retention and referral): How to keep customers happy and turn them into brand evangelists.
Brand Touch Points — The tools utilized to communicate throughout your sales process involves:
Web & digital: Company Web site(s), E-mail communications, social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, blogs, forums etc.), online forums and advertising
Above points should be targeted if you own small business or you are having a start-up. However, if your business has reached to some success level then you can add some more marketing tactics in your marketing plan like:
Outdoor marketing: special events, outdoor signage and graphics
Print communications: Sales materials, annual report, corporate identity package, point-of-sale, direct mail
Broadcast: Film, video, television and radio etc.
This structured approach makes creating your marketing much easier and less intimidating. Simply determine which brand touch points you will use to best accomplish your business. In the larger corporate, strategic marketing which involves paid as well as free enables creation of effective marketing plan, which drives more traffic and enhance performance which directly leads to the achievement of your key business objectives.
So, if you know where your business stands then embrace all that content that can help your business, then you should consider all the marketing tactics which can quickly grow your revenues, gain more exposure and drive tons of traffic.
