Want to avoid the deadliest 3 marketing plan sins?

October 26, 2011, 3:40 PM

Burgess Advertising & Marketing - Marketing PlansTime to talk to Burgess now.

Ask yourself honestly: which of these three pitfalls is keeping you from developing an effective marketing plan for 2012?

  1. Failure to launch: A great marketing plan takes preparation and foresight. Waiting till it’s too late can cost you dearly.
  2. Failure to reach: It takes extraordinary efforts to reach today’s busy, multitasking consumers and businesses. Using one single medium—e.g., TV spots, trade magazine ads or Google AdWords—alone probably won’t cut it.
  3. Failure to learn: Everyone knows you shouldn’t expect different results from the same tired approach. So make sure you explore new media, creative and PR ideas every chance you get.

At Burgess, we’ve helped dozens of clients plan effectively, on time and on budget. We know how to locate your best prospects, and how to talk to them persuasively.

Avoiding the 3 deadliest marketing plan sins

For some, the annual plan is just a chore to churn out and put away in a dusty drawer. But for smart marketers, it’s a dynamic document that can help refine your company’s vision of its future and how to get there.

To get you started, here are three tenets we follow at Burgess:

  1. Start early and prepare all year long. Start planning for next year as soon as you can in the current year. Assess your sales response to each activity, track your competition, read up on trends in your industry in other states, and, if appropriate, conduct research among current and prospective customers. By mid-year, it’s time to start developing financial and budget scenarios so that you can spend a good 3-4 months put together detailed plan.

  2. Take a disciplined, open-minded approach to choosing marketing vehicles. While it’s smart to build on an established presence in, say, your main trade publication, you need to consider all avenues to reach your customers today. Start by defining your target audience in a meaningful way (the tighter the better), then talk to a professional media planner who’s independent of any media outlet. (We think our own Betty Angell is the best in Maine.) Get to know the “new media,” like Google AdWords, Facebook and other web marketing. (Make sure your site is search-engine optimized!) But don’t rule out TV or radio, which are still the king of reach and queen of frequency, respectively, or direct mail.

  3. Keep learning and improving. Measure everything you do: track sales, talk to your customer, check your metrics (web and otherwise). The end of the year is just a date on the calendar, so if something’s clearly not working, tweak it! Your marketing budget is precious and you can’t afford to waste it.

Our team at Burgess has a lot of experience in all facets of marketing planning. Call Matt of Meredith at (207) 775-5227 to ask how we might approach planning for your business. Or check out these pages on our website for more info on the following areas of marketing expertise:

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