Have you ever felt worried that your marketing dollars were not really working for you? We all have. Past tense. Until now—our marketing plan and monthly marketing report ensure that you always make amazing marketing decisions AND RETURN ON YOUR INVESTMENTS!!!
My promise to you is that by the end of reading this blog, you will be COMPLETELY informed and empowered enough to make huge return on your investment(s) on any marketing activity or any dollar you spend!
First, you need to make sure that you have completed the following sections of your marketing plan!
- Create powerful strategic marketing objectives.
- Get clear on your brand: consistency and personality of your company.
- Marketing is authentically sharing who your company is, what they do, who they do it for, and WHY they do it! Get clear on your fundamentals and use these to flow throughout all of your marketing efforts in a consistent and authentic way. Create your Mission, Vision & Culture statements.
- Clearly identify your ideal clients’ (may be more than one segment) characteristics, demographics, psychographics.
- Complete your competitive analysis: who’s in your environment/playing field and what’s our competitive advantage (the UNIQUE strength we have that we will exploit to beat them in attracting our most ideal customers and hitting our revenue goals).
- Do your market calculations: how big is the total market and what percentage of that pie do you need to hit your goals? Increase/change market(s) if you need to!
- Craft your offers: you always want to present your products/services as three main categories. It is easy for human brains to work with. This ensures your ideal clients won’t get analysis paralysis or experience the paradox of choice (too many choices to pick!).
- Remember my three rules for sales: 1. Be authentic. 2. Have their best interests at heart. 3. Have no attachment to the outcome/sale.
- Track & improve all marketing metrics monthly! *Our monthly marketing report template shows you exactly what to measure.
Second, you must plan out your strategic actions, projects, and monthly ongoing responsibilities for your team… so you can achieve those strategic marketing objectives!
- Always keep your Strategic Marketing objectives in mind as you are doing this! These are the entire purpose of your marketing plan and activities!
- Ensure someone is responsible for the marketing budget; do not exceed this, and ensure your marketing team creates a very positive ROI! ROI is a great KPI. With organic SEO and social media techniques it is not unrealistic to expect 1500% return on your investment. This includes time (wages + labour burden) and money (spent on ads/sponsorships/etc.)!
- Create Key Performance Indicators for your marketing team, and review their attainment of those goals monthly. *Put this very important monthly activity in your calendar!
- Calendarize all ongoing duties such as checking to ensure your forms, prompts, buttons and other links work!
- Assign projects, due dates and review upon completion. Ensure project management approach is used.
- The following are some examples of projects and ongoing responsibilities you will want to assign and calendarize:
- Website plan
- SEO plan
- Social media strategy and schedule
- Google posting strategy and schedule
- Google review strategy
- Email marketing strategy
- Text marketing strategy
- PR strategy
- “Stay Loyal Strategy” This is how you will keep your customers coming back and buying forever.
To summarize, your strategic marketing objectives are the crux of everything marketing. They steer your plan, and are the sole purpose of your monthly marketing reports. Without clear marketing goals you may as well try to play hockey with no net! How do you score?!
So, you complete your marketing plan with achieving those objectives in mind, and complete your monthly marketing report to measure your achievement of those objectives. You will get closer and closer each month until you surpass even your own “BIG goals.”
AND, you break down your strategic objectives into smaller projects and KPIs, which once achieved add up to you achieving your strategic objectives!!!
Finally, people always ask me “should I buy this sponsorship or advertising opportunity?” and do you know what I always say?
- Will it move you towards your strategic marketing objectives?
- Is it in your marketing plan?
- Does the data from your monthly marketing report support you saying “yes” to this opportunity?
Then they easily answer their own questions, and you can too.
Wow, I feel like we’ve been on a great marketing journey together!
The plan is made, you know where your ideal clients find you (platforms/mediums), what they love about you (so what you say on those platforms), and you’re tracking and seeing analytics monthly that help you make better and better decisions.
You’re also ensuring that you break down your strategic objectives into smaller projects and goals, and those are ALL GOING INTO CALENDARS and being executed.
You’re meeting monthly (at minimum) to ensure everyone is hitting those smaller goals. *Remember that when they achieve their monthly goals, you achieve your annual strategic marketing objectives!
Lastly, you’re making sure you stick to your marketing budget, and get a very healthy ROI on any time and/or money spent!
THE GOAL IS TO MAKE WAYYYYYY MORE MONEY THAN YOU SPEND with your marketing time and money…. And of course, ACHIEVE YOUR STRATEGIC MARKETING OBJECTIVES!
