Social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook are all abuzz with advice and links to articles and blogs on planning your personal and professional success for 2011*. Revising your old business plan or creating a new one from scratch is a lot like eating right and exercising. We all know we should do it, but it’s easy to put it off.
And, even if we do create well-thought out goals, objectives and an action plan, timetable, budget, etc….well, it still can be hard to stay on track.
So, my advice is to just do it, and cut yourself some slack. If you miss a few benchmarks along the way, dust yourself off and pick up where you left off.
Start With a SWOT Analysis
A couple of weeks ago, Gwen Leahy, a Marketing @ Workaccount executive, and I were talking with Alexander Rossulek, owner of CORVUS Business Solutions, LLC, about the value of businesses doing a SWOT Analysis. A SWOT analysis looks at internal factors (Strengths and Weaknesses) and external factors in the marketplace (Opportunities and Threats).
Marketing at Work has helped a number of clients to perform a SWOT analysis as the first step in creating a marketing plan. If you’ve never gone through this exercise, we advise it as a valuable first step – whether your company has one, 15 or 100 employees.
Involving as many staff from as many different areas of your business and points of view will give you the most comprehensive picture of your business, your customers/clients, and the competitive environment. With one medical client, some of the best insights came from the clerical staff because they interact with patients, insurance companies and professional staff.
A next foundational step is to analyze what your most profitable business areas are.** Then, determine whether you should abandon some unprofitable areas in favor of focusing your efforts – including your marketing dollars – on your more profitable areas.
Finally put together a list of goals and objectives for the year, with an accompanying action plan, timetable and budget for each objective. Adjust the plan as the year goes along. If things take longer than planned, don’t be discouraged or let your plan fall by the wayside. If you scroll down this blog, you’ll see we didn’t do NEARLY as good of a job in staying current on blog posts as we should have. But here we are, plugging away and vowing that we will do better in 2011!
For more practical marketing advice for businesses, please scroll down and read through earlier posts, and visit our website at http://www.dianedemarcomarketing.com.
*Most of these focus on utilizing social media as an important part of your marketing plan. And though social media is an important component, and we include it in every marketing proposal we do for clients, it’s still just part of the overall picture.
**Hermanisms – Axioms for Business & Life by John Herman Jr. has some excellent advice on this subject. www.TheInnkeeperTales.com.
Filed under: Marketing, Marketing Planning, Marketing strategies Tagged: | marketing, marketing planning, marketing strategies, SWOT Analysis
