Cleaning Up Your Marketing

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
questions 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 question 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 s/ales generate repeat s/ales and referrals
for years to come?
18. Want to learn how to generate more s/ales from each
client?

Evaluating Your Marketing Plan
Use Michael's three questions 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 2005 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.