Atlanta's Marketing Center

The Right Calendar Mentality

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One of the most important things you can do to keep your marketing program on track is to put everything on a calendar. Because of the various activities that go into marketing your business, it's important to map them out and set milestones.

A marketing calendar can and should be shared with everyone in the organization for collaboration purposes as well as to keep everyone motivated. I recommend either a shared calendar via software (such as ACT or something similar) or even a big paper wall calendar that everyone has easy access to. Your focus and efforts on the marketing calendar will drive demand and will give everyone a whole new perspective on project management and planning…quite a departure from the going-with-the-crowd mentality for which there is little control. Live by the marketing calendar and you'll have a more realistic chance of hitting your business goals.

Marketing Dashboard

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We're all familiar with what a business plan looks like.  What makes a marketing plan good is the emphasis on the 5 P's along with the competitive analysis and positioning.  The development of the marketing plan is critically important as you align resources correctly.

A tool that I've found is critical as a benchmark or tracking mechanism that shows how you're doing against the goals of your marketing plan is called the "marketing dashboard".  The marketing dashboard is a set of four key indicators that shows the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.  So many owners and executives believe that marketing solely has to do with making the phone ring.  This couldn't be further from the truth.

The four key indicators are--
-number of leads in a particular time period
-number and percentage of leads converted to sales
-number of sales to customers
-average transaction amount

As we learn to think of marketing in this way, it refocuses efforts onto all the areas of revenue enhancement rather than just the one.

Do you use a similar tool? 

License to Promote!

When speaking with business owners about promoting their business, I tend to run into the same obstacle. It's not the budget. It's not the time that needs to be spent on marketing activities. It's not even a disagreement with how a marketing plan is written. No, the biggest issue is a false sense of humility.

Some owners by nature tend to go with the flow.  They tend to do what the next guy is doing (also known as copycat marketing). Or they tend to avoid the topic altogether.  Deep down, they consider promotions and marketing to be a bit vain.  Why stick out when business has been coming in from years based almost totally on a job well done?  But what happens when a large part of the market dries up?  What happens when the old stream of referrals isn't there anymore?

What happens is that because a large portion of contractors are humble, they don't proactively promote their business.  And when business is harder to come by, owners suddenly find themselves in a tough place. 

But it's never too late to promote one's business...even on a shoestring budget.  I find that when owners make the conscious decision to promote rather than sit back...it's truly a watershed moment.  So what I want to do is officially give you a license to promote.  The truth of the matter is that the public wants you to promote yourself.  They want an easy way to find you.  They want to see all the good work you've done.  So allow yourself the ability to promote your business.  You'll make some mistakes along the way...but to the degree that you promote, business will come in again.

Marketing Plan Pro + ACT = Impact

Here's a great deal...from Palo Alto software.  They've packaged the new Marketing Plan Pro (MPP) software with the latest version of ACT!, the popular contact management software.

The idea is that the first software (MPP) will help you map out a practical marketing plan and the second will help you keep track of your customers and prospects.  I think these are the most impactful tools available for running your small business the right way.

If you're like one of the many who are already sold on these products, then you have to be impressed with the package pricing.  If you were to buy the ACT! program on its own, then it's not much less expensive.  The two together offer a savings of $150.  And that's nothing to sneeze about.  Order your package here.

Growin' like a 'shroom

Has your company grown like a mushroom?

You know...perhaps it has grown through referrals and you might have been tied up in all the responsibilities and tasks of running the business.  By being so customer service focused, it's easy then to get caught up with adding numerous features to your offering in an attempt to appeal to the broadest possible audience.  Give the customers what they want, right?

John Jantsch, of Duct Tape Marketing fame, calls that "featuritis" or "feature-creep".  It's when so many features of your service are added that the offering isn't perceived as doing any one thing particularly well.  The problem then is that your customers won't consider you to be offering anything different from the next guy.

What would happen if you defined your offering as you do your company and stuck to your guns in terms of what the offer was?  That is, choose two or three things your company or product delivered and you communicated those things over and over again.  My guess is that your target market would soon get the point and the value would go up.
If you've been "growin' like a 'shroom" then you might have experience a case of featuritis.  And that's no fun.  My recommendation is to get back to the basics...redefine who you are, you offering, and stick to your guns when communicating to prospect and customers.

Atlanta Marketing Plans

Marketing can be exciting as you get going, but there's no getting around the seemingly laborious planning phase in the beginning.  This phase is typically when business owners stop the business-building process.  Why?  Because it's a lot of work and it's difficult to see the rewards early on.  I don't know how to make this easier for business owners except to say that in about 5-6 months, if you stay on track and follow the plan, you'll be realizing the gains you've been hoping for. 

In terms of a planning tool that makes it relatively easy, there's none better than Marketing Plan Pro by Palo Alto Software.  The company has been well-known for years for it's extremely popular software Business Plan Pro.  Over the last several years, it's partner application, Marketing Plan Pro, has become the defacto standard for market planning for small business owners.

Palo Alto Software recently chose Duct Tape Marketing to partner with and has integrated the Duct Tape Marketing system into its planning process.  As a Certified Coach of the Duct Tape Marketing organization, I have integrated the award-winning application into my process to optimize the effectiveness of my Atlanta marketing service.  If interested in this planning and research service, let me know.

I'm curious to know what kind of planning tool you're now using.  Let me know.

New Years' Direction

If you neglected to write an end-of-year 2006 review during the last week of rainy days, then shame on you.  There was all kinds of time to go over 2006 highlights, areas where you made progress, and areas that you need to work on.

I have my goals in a Word file and I just highlight in green those goals that I achieved and highlight in red those where I fell short.  That way, I can transfer (or perhaps adjust) those goals into 2007.  Of course, everyone has their own system whether formal or informal.  I think few people do an end of year review because most people don't want to look back to discover they didn't accomplish something.  To that I say, Get Over It!  Life keeps going and for many of us fortunately healthy people, you have lots of time to accomplish what you want.  Learn from the mistakes and improve.

Of course I realize I'm just being a reinforcer by strongly encouraging you to set goals for 2007.  On a personal level, I might suggest that you break the goals into the following areas--Vocation, Financial, Relationship, Health, and Spiritual.  These areas seem to be the most logical and elegant ways of compartmentalizing.

In terms of the business, I recommend that you update the business plan and if you don't have a marketing plan, to spend time developing it.  If you need help, then let me know and I can work with you or at least send you a couple different guidelines to work from.  Let's make 2007 all that it can be!