As an investment just like buying a home or car you need to do your homework. Your marketing will only ever be as good as your strategy and planning behind it. To help you make better marketing decisions I have put together a Marketing Objectives Mud Map. It is a diagram to help you consider some of the important elements when creating a marketing plan for your small business. Don’t panic, a marketing plan doesn’t need to be a 40 page document.

Here is a template to plan out your activities but step one is really getting the strategy right. We thought of you when we created the Small Business Marketing Planner Package. Take a look and when you are ready to invest in marketing we are here.

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Is your business sucking the life out of you? What are your goals for 2012 as a small business owner?

There is something about the comfort of an old t-shirt as p.js or a nice pair of warm socks that keeps you turning back for things of comfort. I guess the same can be said for setting goals for your small business. It is comforting to just go with the flow, rather than set some ambitious goals that make you get out of your comfort zone. But without the end game in mind, your small business becomes a job can have you working 80 hours a week and sucking the life out of you.

As Brian Tracey says in his goal setting sessions, “success is goals.”What do you want out of life? What do you want out of your small business? What will make you happy? Seems simple, but most us seem to do what is easy or do what we have always done even if that means our business runs us, instead of us running our business. We put our heads under the doona and hit the snooze button, rather than take the challenge of changing and do that brisk walk when the alarm button goes off in the morning.

For me, to grow my small business and even keep it afloat it is about knowing what are the important questions to ask? It is being able to make the right decisions on a day by day basis that takes me that ideal company I have in your mind. To do this I have to be able to picture that vision with real clarity. Here are some aids I have found that will help you ask those tough questions and set the stage for a great 2012 and a business you want to run. A year that you will look back at and say, “yeah, 2012 was a great year for me and I am getting closer to that vision I have for my company and my life”.

• Have a vision for where you want to go. Is your business sucking the life out of you? What is it would you like your life to look like? John Jantsch Goal Setting Video is a must resource. John has a exercise of describing your business as it is 3, 5 years from now and what does it look like? Goal Setting I find it useful to have a personal vision and a company vision.

• Set some realistic but stretch revenue goals. We all need money to live. We need our small business to provide for us. What do you want your income to be now and in the next 1, 3, 5 years? I do this every revenue setting exercise  every year. I sit down and write an amount that I need and would like to make. Guess what? I come within 5% of  this figure year on year. Each year I try and stretch the figure and each year I reach it. I guess it is because once I have a target I plan my plan to support it. I do everything in a purposeful way. As a consultant,I find it useful to set, monthly, weekly and daily targets that sharpen my focus. It is a real measurement for me in terms of how I am tracking . http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/ is a great tool for this purpose. I love Freshbooks.com for time, invoice and estimate tracking. (heaps better than MYOB in my book).

• What do you need to invest in yourself to reach your roles

“Success is something that you attract, by becoming an attractive person.” As Jim Rohn

says “work harder on yourself than you do on your job.” Personal development is an area all about developing skills that will serve you well in growing your business and making better business decisions. An extra skill I have developed digital marketing have served me well. Podcasting and writing has enabled me to reach you. What do you need to be able to make better decisions this year. How can you be the expert in your industry? Invest in yourself.

• Build a great team around. Zig Ziggler says, “if you can help enough people get what they want then you can probably get what you want.” This give to get mentality is already used in content marketing to great affect. We can no longer interrupt, persuade or buy people’s attention. We need to earn, give and educate to receive it.  Building a great team around me is critical to business success. I spend a lot of time on communicating and sharing with my team so we are all on the same vision with clear goals to get there. I also focus on having fun.

• Get a Coach or Mentor. The biggest growth I got in one single year was when I took on a lifeline.  A Lifeline concept was introduced to me by Keith Ferrazzi when I read his book, Who’s Got Your Back. This is a person that I could banter with, share ideas, and would be accountable to. As a small business it is easy to feel isolated. Networking groups help but there is nothing like having that person who as got your back.  I am lucky in that I found this person just when I was ready and he has shaped my approach to business. He shares the same value set as me and I respect his opinion. However he has a different approach to me and asks me the tough questions and always has my back. I do the same for him. I remember interviewing Linda Hailey another successful small business marketer and she did this with her competitor. They would have lunch and share information, ideas and learn. Who can you ask to mentor you? Most people will say yes. I set up a group called BrainJam for CEOS and BrainJam for Marketing Students to do that very thing. To share ideas and banter. It is a must for small businesses.

Other resources

Brian Tracy – Goal Setting

Vision Mission Values Template

Who’s Got Your Back by Keith Ferrazzi

Your True North Exercise

Get Found!

For small business some of the most important search is local and optimising your site to be found in local search directories.

Here are some of our top hints on how to optimise your site being found locally.

1. Add your site to Google Places, Bing and Yahoo Search Engines. Claiming your site requires some information but be sure to include as much key rich words into these listings including categories, hours of operation, forms of payment, images and social media profiles.

Add your physical address (including the suburb and city) to every page of your website.

2. Current and useful content is a great way to direct traffic and the search engine to your site. Either linking to your blog and listing this on your web as an RSS feed or having an e-newsletter in your website with key rich categories and topics is a great way to be found.

3. Look for opportunities to build credibility to your site by getting backlinks from good sites. Referral sites, industry directories and online media are all avenues you should explore to get listed, quoted and mentioned.

4. Social media profiles like Facebook, LinkedIn, U-tube, etc can help to spread your business’ reach. Pushing content to these sites can increase traffic back to your website.

Tools and Tips:

video 10 things you can do for your small business online.

Google places – video on how to do this

How to get found online – podcast by Tim and Luke

How to build a website – thanks Luke some good optimising tips like start with WordPress which is search engine friendly!

For assistance in setting up your local profile view our digital marketing services.

Related posts:

Does the small business need SEO?

Top 5 tips for Google listings

So how are you going getting found on the web5 Keys to designing a great website

Optimising a press release for SEO

At one stage it was okay to have a brochure style website but now it needs to be optimised to be found in google, capture leads and be socially mentionable.

Learn more about how we help you get your digital marketing strategy working for your small business today and help you harness the opportunity in every click, connection and conversation.

Here are my top hints about where you should be spending your budget in 2012.

1. Make sure it can be measured or don’t do it. If you can’t measure it then don’t even bother. You need to ensure you know what the return will be on your investment every time. Coupon deals seem like a good idea at the time especially if you are a small business desperately scrambling to draw in new customers, but these deals are often very costly mistakes. They can tie up your stock or staff in a promotion that rarely results in repeat customers. Think carefully and plan. Here are some of the measurements that matter.

• Traffic to your store, website, Facebook page. It is not the be all and end all but even to know if any one is visiting your online site is a start. Go deeper  and use google analytics to understand what key words they used to find you, where they looked and how long they stayed.
• Leads refers to how many people you captured the name and email address of so you can have an ongoing relationship with over time. If you had 3000 people visit your website in 1 month and you collected no names and email addresses and had no enquiries something has to change.
• Customers – how many do you have are they profitable and are they happy or delighted with your service. This requires asking some questions and finding out the answers but your business will be at less risk if you know this information.

2. Online presence is essential. More of us are looking online to buy or review what we are thinking of purchasing. Ensuring you have a online presence that is integrated is important. It is more than a well functioning website. A website is the hub of your communication but an online presence where your customers are is essential. If your customers are on Facebook then you need a presence there. If they are more a LinkedIn crowd then go there. Where ever you decide to invest you need to commit to updating and providing information that will generate leads.

3. Map out the customer lifecycle of you ideal client or customer. By spending some time really thinking about your ideal customer and the problem that you solve for them you can make some better decisions about where to spend your marketing budget. Every touch point with your customer is a marketing opportunity. So if your receptionist is not friendly and hasn’t got a customer orientated mindset start there! How can you be more useful to your customers. Aussie Farmers sent me this week a useful tool about the storage of fruit. As my online supermarket it is doing a great job about thinking of tips and ideas of how to be more useful and thus keep me a loyal customer.

How can you provide some information to your customers to show you care and serve them better? I say this is money well spent.

4. Invest in Just in Time Software Applications. Technology is changing so quickly and there are so many types of software apps that will assist a small business run it’s marketing dept affordably. I say rather than lock yourself into a fixed capital cost pay by the month for different software options giving you the opportunity to upgrade and change as your customers needs change and new technologies come on board. Just about every marketing tool, website, email software, survey software, customer service applications and much more can be purchased as a fee per month service.

5. Grow your database. There isn’t a business that I have found that says “I don’t want to grow”. Stop growing and you can die. Growing a list of interested key customers is always a good idea. The way we do this today has changed. According to Forrester Research in 2012 50% of all purchases will be made or influenced by online activity. This means that the way we engage with our prospects is largely online. Having a helpful tip sheet, how too, or competition might be a great way for you to grow the list of potential customers for 2012.

If it is an offer that is really attractive and to your ideal customers and affordable for you then that could be an effective use of your marketing spend.

6. Integrate online and offline. It is important to use both online and offline marketing strategies together. Sometimes a physical Christmas card works better than an e-card. SMSing might be more appropriate than ringing to confirm an appointment. You need to know your customers and their preferences. If you do an inshore promotion it makes sense to do it online as well and use the distribution channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, PR etc) to communicate it. It makes sense to have an offer on your Facebook welcome page to collect emails just as much as it is to have a FB like on your website. Think about how you can maximise the leverage between these tools and the online and offline world of your customers to get the maximum bang for your marketing dollar.

7. Get some good marketing advice. If you are running your small business it is likely you have some good ideas about what works to attract customers but bother surpasses a marketing expert that has experience in the field of marketing both online and offline. Some of the best money spent should be on getting the right advice to plan your 2012 strategy so that you know it is based on sound reasoning.

Get a marketing plan today.Download a small business marketing planning session as a pdf
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If you marketing approach that will work with your business, is easy to implement and doesn’t cost the earth.

Ready to get started? Remember with out a marketing plan you are unlikely to be able to consistently bring in new leads to your small business. 

Book a consultation session today.

Download a small business marketing planning session as a pdf
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Tom Stockdale, Owner  - Stockdale Printstaff

Her podcast is an easy way to get quick marketing tips and Dan also gives presentations and classes so visit our speaking gigs for more information.

Also visit our resources tab for webinars and tools we find handy!