Tag: business plan

For years, I kept my business strategy in my head. It was a reliable place to keep it, or at least I thought. My memory is fairly decent when it comes to things that matter and reaching my business goals – matters. 

With our marketing plan, that was another story. Writing it down is what we do, and we know that it is the only way to achieve marketing goals, aligning the sales function with marketing tactics that derive results.

You are either at the half way mark or you have just closed off a financial year - either way, there are some things every entrepreneur should have done in July that really is a game-changer for the rest of the calendar year.

As a 20-year entrepreneur, I have learned a few things over the years and some things I have had to learn repetitively until I 'got it'. Learning should be embraced they say, and I agree wholeheartedly but sometimes when you are in the thick of it, it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel let alone the 'why' you needed to learn that lesson again and again.

It happens. You have all the best intentions and for some reason your marketing strategy isn't working. Believe it or not, it has happened to some of the biggest businesses on the planet; think Kodak and Microsoft. 

Over the past few weeks, a friend of mine has approached me to give them some tips and guidance on being an entrepreneur. They have been a seasoned professional, in the same field for 20 years, and now they feel they are finally ready to take the leap.

The problem is, they don't know where to start. Well, they do, but they haven't quite grasp how much they have to do to get the ball rolling.

The amount of times people ring Marketing Eye to talk about their marketing efforts, and they have literally left it to the last minute, I cannot count. It actually happens on a daily basis. Leaving your business' destiny in the hands of a marketing company (or any company) that doesn't know your product and service as intimately as you, and has no data science on what you have done previously from a marketing perspective is simply crazy.

If you have left it until now to write your 2017/18 marketing strategy, then you are really hitting a fine line, because there is a lot to be done before executing a powerful, deliberate marketing campaign in July that will see your company hit sales targets, connect with customers and accelerate your potential in the marketing.

One of the biggest misconceptions that business owners have it is that if they have a marketing strategy developed, all of a sudden, overnight, an influx of leads will come through the door.

It's hard running a business, and even harder to manage the fact that many entrepreneurs and CEO's want everything 'yesterday' and are impatient by nature. That same impatience often makes them very success, as does their attention to detail, but when it comes marketing, unless you have an unlimited budget, it is impossible to be an overnight success.

As an owner of an agency, I know this thought process too well.

It takes a good 20 to 40 hours minimum to write a marketing strategy, and that is after research and a 4-hour workshop. To expect that to be finished overnight in itself is impossible and would be only at the determent of the client. No-one is that good, that innovative and creative to put their knowledge into a strategy that is campaign driven to drive leads. No-one. We could put 20 people on the one strategy and it still would not be right after a week - and that is fact.

I come up with my best ideas away from the office. Not sitting at my desk under pressure.

I have never been more busy in my life. I remember 2 years ago feeling completely overwhelmed by having so much on my plate, and feeling as though I was floundering.

I kept on taking on more 'stuff' and it wasn't a case of not being able to say no. I simply wanted to do all the things I was doing and they were important to me. I hired two personal assistants and that worked wonders, except I decided that they were too good to be personal assistants and moved them promptly into other roles.

We are nearing the last quarter of the year, and many of us who have done our yearly business and marketing plans have done exactly what we should not have. That is distribute to the key players, then forget about it.