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Issue 12 – June 2004
More electronic
newsletter articles:
Wilson's
Writings
Leadership
Lessons
Practice
Perspectives
Marketing Matters
Successful
Strategies
Marketing
Matters:
How a Simple Spreadsheet Can Improve Your Marketing
Efforts
When we think of “writing” a marketing plan, most of us visualize a multi-page or lengthy document that takes a Masters in Marketing to write and to execute. At ConvergenceCoaching, LLC, we suggest that all of our clients begin their marketing planning efforts by developing a marketing calendar. And, we recommend they use our good friend, the Excel spreadsheet, to do so.
Most of us with financial backgrounds are familiar with Excel. Now you can apply your financial wizardry to the marketing realm by using this simple spreadsheet as a marketing calendar to schedule and plan your marketing activities. Developing a marketing calendar in this way will help you track and then improve your firm’s marketing investments by developing a simple method to measure your costs, ensure accountability and monitor success. For an example of a template marketing calendar you can use to get started, click on the link below:
http://www.convergencecoaching.com/private_csc/newcscdocs/marketing%20calendar%20template.xls
It would be nice if we told you that all you have to do to market successfully is create a marketing calendar. But, as nice as this would be to hear, it just isn’t true. Instead, you’ll undertake the step of creating your marketing calendar after you have done the necessary marketing planning, which includes:
- Completing a proper SWOT analysis;
- Developing your firm’s overall value proposition; and
- Identifying your key products and services and their respective target audience and value propositions, too.
For more information
on these planning steps, which we’ve written about in the past,
contact tamera@convergencecoaching.com or click on the link below for
a sample SWOT Analysis template:
http://www.convergencecoaching.com/csc_docs/SWOT%20Template.2.03.doc
For the balance of this article, though, we will focus on the tactical implementation of creating your marketing calendar.
Creating Your Marketing Calendar
The building blocks of a successful marketing plan consist of the following steps, which are incorporated into your marketing calendar:
Step 1 –
Define your objectives and goals
The first step is to identify and define the outcomes you are looking
for from your marketing plan. Your objectives should be measurable, like
the number of prospects you intend to generate and by when. By defining
measurable objectives, you will be able to accurately assess the success
of your marketing efforts.
Step 2 –
Identify your ideal target market
The next step is to identify your ideal target client for each initiative
that you intend to market around. As you begin to identify your ideal
target, you will need to develop answers for the following questions:
- What type of client can best use the X service of your firm? By industry, size, geography, etc.?
- What difference does your firm make for these types of clients and how?
- What action do you want from them?
Once you have identified your ideal target, you will need to develop a list of prospects for your specific target markets. There are several ways to obtain prospects, including purchasing lists from your local Chamber of Commerce, Dunn and Bradstreet, InfoUSA and many other list brokers that can help match your criteria and allow you to purchase or rent a mailing list. Remember to consider your current clients that fit your ideal target market for services they may not be receiving from you.
Step 3 –
Identify marketing activities
You’re almost at the finish line in developing your marketing calendar!
While there are many, many marketing and lead generation activities from
which you can choose, you’ll want to first start with two or three
different activities and fully implement and measure those before moving
on to additional activities. A few ideas to consider as your first priority
include:
- Surveys;
- Teleprospecting;
- Web seminars, Client Briefings or Executive Briefings; and
- Newsletters or Email communications
Remember to inform your entire team about any marketing activities you are undertaking so that they can properly respond to questions when contacted and will know who to refer inquiries to within the firm.
Step 4 –
Complete your marketing calendar
Now that you have identified your goals, target market and marketing activities,
it’s time to complete your marketing calendar. Start with a simple
Excel spreadsheet and begin filling in the information necessary to track
and monitor your marketing activities. We
recommend that your marketing calendar include the following columns including
the:
- Type of marketing activity;
- Specific measures of success for that activity;
- “By When” date that will enable you to know when the campaign is scheduled to occur. This is particularly important to ensure that your activities are properly spaced and don’t “step” on one another time wise;
- Target audience to whom the activity is directed (existing clients, prospects, and the type of client as defined previously);
- Project owner within your firm – the person driving the activity and ensuring it is being executed on properly, within the budget and time frame;
- Project status, where the owner will update the status of their projects for regular reporting on marketing activities;
- Cost of the components of that marketing activity;
- Comments where the owner or others can include comments that might update the team on changes to the plans or reasons for budget or time line changes; and
- Results where your project owner or someone on the team will measure the activity by the number of opportunities it generated and any new engagements that can be traced to the activity.
Ensure that your marketing efforts are successful by assigning owners for each of the activities in your calendar. In addition, we recommend that you assign one owner, who can be a person in administration, to own the updating of the overall calendar and to whom all owners will input their status. This will help ensure accountability.
Finally, remember that your marketing plan is a living document that is impacted by changes in your firm, the economy, your competition, and especially by your actual experience with the activities you’re implementing.
We then recommend that you meet regularly, at least monthly, but more frequently at first, with all marketing activity owners and the overall owner of the marketing calendar to review the status of all activities on the calendar and discuss issues that arise, outcomes that occur and work together to regularly modify your plan based on experience. Taking this iterative approach to your calendar will enable you to manage your marketing investments wisely and migrate your investments to those things that really pay dividends for your firm.
For more information on developing a marketing plan or creating a marketing calendar, contact Tamera Loerzel at tamera@convergencecoaching.com or call 952.226.1780.