Organizing Your Marketing for the New Year

The New Year typically brings on new resolutions and goals both personally as well as for our business.  But as with any goal, in order to stick with it and achieve it, we must have a plan in mind.  According to SmartSimple Marketing, the first step in making a plan is to de-clutter and organize our mind.  We need to focus and get pass our mental blocks and clearly define our goals, what we want the end result to be, and what action steps are needed to achieve our goals.

The new year brings on the opportunity to get rid of the old and begin the new, i.e. new goals, new plan, new actions, new thought process.  Reviewing what worked, what didn’t work, where improvements are needed and what new ideas and strategies we need to put in place.  Get rid of the notion, well I tried that and it didn’t work.  Sometimes it’s not that it didn’t work, maybe we didn’t implement correctly and with a little tweaking, it becomes a great idea/strategy/action.

One of the things I tell my clients is, you have to be persistent and consistent.  Oftentimes I see business owners try something new, but because it didn’t have instant results, the idea/action was dropped and they were on to something else or gave up all together.  Relationship marketing takes time.  Yes, sometimes there is ‘Love at First Sight,’ but it’s rare.  Relationships whether personal or business take time.  It takes time to get to know, like, and trust someone before you refer to them or buy from them.  In being persistent and consistent in our marketing, we are saying to our clients as well as our prospects that we are reliable and trustworthy.  That we are going to be around awhile. 

One of the best ways to get organized with our marketing is to write everything down, especially if we have a million ideas running through our mind.  Make a list of ideas, evaluate how much time and money each with take.  Whether you can do it yourself, or would it make more sense to outsource.  Keep all ideas in one place and as you take action, record the results, i.e. what worked, what didn’t, etc.  Does the idea/action need more time, does it need to be changed, tweaked, etc.  Remember the saying the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same actions over and over and expecting different results. 

Now is a good time to devise a marketing plan for the year. 

Here are some ideas to consider.  These can be used for social media, blogs, newsletters, special offers, etc.

• Depending on your business, you might think about a theme a month.  Refer to an online calendar like Brownielocks.com  to find ideas that are appropriate for your business.  For example:  January is ‘Get Organized Month.’

• Write down all your ideas and organize as appropriate.  Use a notebook and/or online document like Evernote, but keep everything together in one place in order to reference when needed.

• Go ahead and research and write your content for your blogs and newsletters.  Oftentimes when I start writing about one subject, several others seem to spawn.  Rather than trying to do a brain dump with one article, divide the material into smaller ‘bite size’ pieces.  If you’re doing video, 3 to 5 minute segments are suggested.  Same with written articles.

• Schedule posts to social media when possible.  Link social media accounts to cut down on time spent posting.  There are also social media scheduling tools where all social media posting can be done from one place, i.e. Hootsuite, Buffer, SocialOomph, etc. 

• Be prepared to be flexible.  You may have something come up that is more relevant.  Something may happen or be trending in the news that triggers an idea.  Adjust your plan and actions accordingly.

• Track your progress and results against your plan, re-evaluate and keep moving forward being persistent and consistent.

How do we achieve our resolutions and goals? 

-        - Get organized

-        - Make a Plan

-        - Take Action

-        - Be Persistent and Consistent

-        - Be Flexible

-        - Track our results

-        - Rinse and Repeat

      We would love to hear about your plans for marketing for the new year.  Your feedback and comments are welcomed and appreciated.

Happy Marketing,

Annette

Virtual Assistant

Painted Lady Enterprises