Building Your Marketing Plan – Step Five
Below is my monthly contribution to The Stuckey Report, a monthly service e-zine in Cobb County Georgia. I thought you would enjoy:
Step Five in creating your marketing plan is the fun step! This is where you get to choose from all the marketing mediums available to you. Tactical tools like direct mail, websites, blogs, television commercials, e-zines, Goodyear blimp ads, trade shows, on-line ads, newspaper ads, etc. This list goes on and on.
But CAUTION! The problem with most small businesspeople? They jump right to this step, and ignore the first four. They would rather send out mail, produce brochures, create a website – WITHOUT having gone through those critical prior steps.
They don’t know who their customers are, why they buy, how they buy, etc. When you don’t know those things, you are making a meal without a recipe – you don’t know what you are going to get.
But the key to selecting your marketing mediums? Find the ones that deliver your marketing message – to as many targeted prospects – cost effectively. Sure, we would all love to run a commercial during the Super Bowl, but that doesn’t make sense for most of us.
You also need to select the right marketing medium to reach the right audience. If you are targeting senior citizens, don’t run radio spots on Hip Hop radio stations.
When you have done all the ground work and you are armed with the critical information gathered in the four previous steps, selecting the right marketing mediums for your business becomes easy – and fun!
Todd Schnick is the president of the Intrepid Group LLC, a small business marketing firm. You can find his website and marketing blog at www.intrepid-llc.com!
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