So you have a vision, you know what you want to create this year, but how will you do it?
(If you have missed the previous steps in this business planning series, catch them here:
Step 4 – Your top 3 strategies.
How are you going to achieve those goals you listed and prioritized? These are the simple strategies that will create the focus for your efforts in your business. Will you be speaking? Developing a better, effective website? Creating a quality list or tribe of hot prospects, customers, partners and fanatics? Or how about connecting with 20 great people each month?
You can see that each of these strategies will need to include specific steps and tactics. But for the purpose of staying focused and avoiding the “bright, shiny object” syndrome, selecting 3 strategies will direct your activities for yourself and your team. Still not seeing it?
If you know that your top strategy is to develop 20 monthly quality connections for clients, promotions, and cash flow, then your activities on Facebook will be focused on select connections who can support this strategy, thus supporting your goals of making more money and developing promotional partners so you can market less and sell more.
Making sense? Here’s an example:
Top 3 Strategies for Accomplishing Our Goals:
1. Shift programming from private consulting/coaching – Build 3 small group coaching programs (5-8 clients in each program)
2. Communicate with more people – Share good information daily – utilize my content calendar for email, blogging & social media; teach classes, interview and be interviewed.
3. Offer my systems for measuring, strategy & success – develop training and support for group and private clients and their teams to access to expedite the learning curve; offers will include online programs, interviews, workshops and other opportunities to teach & empower change-makers
This one can get complicated for some, so here is another example:
Top 3 Strategies for Accomplishing Our Goals:
1. Online visibility to include public relations, press releases, article marketing, blogging, social media, websites, online forums & events to attract, enroll, engage and reinforce our value to our market
2. Online marketing to include websites that attract and build a list of interested customers and funnels them through a relationship building process to enroll into a consulting or training program
3. Speaking Campaign that includes Joint Venture & peer development campaign intended to build awareness , and an engaged audience that become customers that generate cash flow from both speaking engagements and additional opportunities.
Hopefully, this is starting to make sense.
ACTION STEP:
Make a list of all the marketing activities you should be doing. Notice, I said “activities” and not strategies. The strategy will come in a few minutes. Now review the list for your favorite activities. I generally prefer that my clients stick to the activities they love. But if you have support from a team, then include some of the “have-to’s” that you can outsource.
Once you have narrowed your list, identify your top strategies that will lead you to meeting your goals and will support your vision for your ideal life and business. For clarification about the differences between marketing tactics and marketing strategies, read this article.
And stay tuned for the final step in completing your simple, strategic plan for 2013 success!