Cleaning Up Your Marketing

by Charlie Cook

Has your once well-organized marketing plan come
to resemble the jumble of stuff in your closet
(not to mention the garage and the attic)? If you
are like most people, each time you come across a
new marketing idea you try to adopt it and add it
to your existing approach.

Strategies and tactics tend to accumulate and
linger even when they may not be working as well
as you'd like. Like the ill-fitting clothes that
accumulate in your closet or the broken tools
still in the garage, they are hard to get rid of,
whether because of habit, emotional attachment or
just plain not getting around to cleaning them out.

To improve your marketing, you'll need to clean out
some old ways of working. While I don't want to get
anywhere near your closet, and in fact I could use
some help with mine, I can show you how to clean
up your marketing plan so you're ready to take
advantage of the New Year to grow your business.

Cleaning Up Your Marketing Plan Every morning my
friend Michael Angier of SuccessNet.org sits down
at his desk and asks himself the following three
quëstions about his business.

1. What's working?
2. What's not working?
3. What can I improve?

You may not want to review your marketing plan
five times a week, but it is a good idea to do
it at least once a year. So take out your pencil
or fire up your computer and assess your
marketing plan:

Your Marketing Plan
1. Is your plan working?

2. Do you have a well defined marketing strategy
that helps you achieve the
three phases of marketing:
Getting Attention,
Positioning, and
Selling?
3. Do you need to write or rewrite
your marketing plan?

4. Do you need additional information
or coaching to complete your marketing plan?

5. What are you going to do to
improve your marketing plan?

Getting Attention
6. Does your marketing message
prompt prospects to contact you?

7. Do your ads, letters, and
web site motivate prospects to contact you?

8. What are your conversion rates?

9. What steps can you take
to improve them?

Positioning
10. What are you doing to establish your
credibility with prospects, to help them
know and trust you?

11. Is it working as well as you'd like?

12. What could you improve?

13. Is the value of your products and
services clear to your prospects or
do they quëstion you about merits and price?

14. Want to learn how to ensure that
your prospects understand the value of
your products and services?

Selling
15. How successful are you in selling,
that is, in getting commitments for
everything from appointments to orders?

16. What's your conversion rate of
prospects contacted to clients
and customers?

17. Do initial sales generate repeat
sales and referrals for years to come?

18. Want to learn how to generate
more sales from each client?

Evaluating Your Marketing Plan
Use three quëstions to summarize
your comments about your marketing plan and
your success in getting attention, positioning
and selling.

1. What's working?

2. What's not?

3. What do you want to improve?

The hardest part about cleaning out your
closet, attic, garage or your marketing is
getting started. It may be time to straighten
up or throw out some of your old marketing
strategies and tactics and replace them with
new more effective ones.

Start with a well organized marketing plan,
one that helps you get attention,
position your products and services and
sell and you'll find your business growing
in leaps and bounds in the coming year.


The author
Charlie Cook, helps service
professionals and small business owners
attract more clients and be more successful.
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