If you’ve been reading the previous posts in this series then you know that I am a strong recommender of planning, planning, planning before you spend precious resources on marketing programs.  But if you’ve been through the planning phases then it’s time to develop the marketing plan and pull the trigger.  The marketing plan itself must take into consideration not only resources and time but most importantly you need to consider how your likely prospects get and absorb information.

I had a client who was very proud of the fact that they had done a lot of leg work to get their brochures into doctor’s offices where their likely targets would be visiting.  Okay, but did any one pick it up, read it, take it home, act on it?  Yes there are ways to track this but my point is in thinking about the marketing program they only thought about the first part of how their prospects might get information and left off the part about absorbing it. I get hundreds of emails a day but like television I’m good at zapping past the ones that don’t speak to me.

There are lots of marketing tactics so to whittle down the list be sure that the tactics you choose support your annual goals and are the methods your likely targets will respond to.  After that of course it’s about the message.  But even the message needs to be tailored to the goal.  Are you just after building brand awareness, driving traffic to your web site, building relationships to the point of purchase, etc?

Lastly, don’t bite off more than you can chew in terms of starting too many projects you can’t sustain through the analysis phase.  While occasionally a one time marketing campaign to satisfy a specific sales need is just fine you really should be thinking a longer-term strategy where one program can build off or integrate with another. Such as a newsletter or blog request for sign-up to capture an opt-in email address, then used to offer a specific discount, sending them to a web site landing page that offers companion products.

Susan Frederick