Live by a Marketing Calendar

One of the core principles of Duct Tape Marketing is to "Live by a Marketing Calendar." I am going to write a series of blogs on this subject to expand on his concept. It is area that I feel that John Jantsch does not spend enough time in his book and proves to be valuable tool for most small businesses.

A simple idea on how to have a good one is to look at the people that use them to be successful. No, I am not talking Franklin Covey, I am talking someone that is using them for marketing and living by them, PUBLICATIONS. Go look at some media kits you have and evaluate what you like about them.



Here is why, they are simple and easy to read and they answer these questions:

1. Theme for each month = what
2. Material due dates = when
3. Mail dates = when
4. Types of material = how
5. Publication being used = where
6. Recipient = who

Oh yeah, it sounds like that Rudyard Kipling thing: "I keep six honest men. They taught me all I knew. Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who." I urge you to use these six men.

My Calendar is being updated continously and is on my web page, take a look.

Microsoft Live Small Business

From John Jantsch in today's DTM Blog today....

Microsoft Office Live Small Business, a suite of online tools aimed squarely at the small business, went live today with a pretty significant upgrade to the already powerful tool. Office Live allows you to easily create and host a website as well as manage contacts, schedule meetings, share documents and projects and integrate online ads from [...]

how Can you Fast Track your plan?

Small business people I believe are simply tired of hearing about another plan, another system, they simply want to get the work done. We have all heard all the reasons and I can recite zillions of them way too much for this blog but the simple fact is, we accomplish more with a plan. But how do we get started. Look at your top producers, they are probably already doing one that works within your company but it may not be documented.

The quickest and most effective way is to build a plan on where you are at. On what is working. It is one of the most important processes that you can do. Then you can define your objectives, develop strategies to achieve them, than institute action plans to carry out your strategies. If your objectives are not being met your strategies and actions may need to be changed. But without a baseline and a plan to work from, the process and achievements are only arbitrary.As an example, most businesses have no sales process whatsoever. An effective sales process spans from lead generation to include marketing through sales closure. Pick one area at a time and make a commitment to improve that. You might have a long list, but you have to start somewhere and before too long you'll have dramatically improved.

You must live by a marketing calendar. The idea is to keep doing something related to marketing, according to plan, day in and month out. When you plan your marketing activities using a calendar, your focus tends to be on the immediate goal leaving the long term goals become part of the process. Tracking and accountability is built into the calendar so that you can see the progress or where you may become off-track.

How does your calendar look?

Interesting Survey

Here's an interesting survey done by the National Federation of Independent Businesses on small business marketing...part of a great resource site which you can find at http://www.411sbfacts.com/

Results of 2006 Survey on Marketing:

1. The primary customer base for 45 percent of small businesses is the general public; However, for 30 percent, the primary customer base is too varied for small employers to identify one.
2. Twelve (12) percent of small businesses sell to a small number of business customers creating the potential of becoming a captive supplier.
3. Fifty-five (55) percent of small employers think that their businesses do not need much marketing since their products/services pretty much sell themselves. Forty-two (42) percent disagree.
4. A large share of the small-business population depends on repeat customers. Twelve (12) percent of small-business owners indicate virtually all customers are repeat customers while another 35 percent say most are repeat.
5. The distinction between marketing and selling is sharp for virtually as many as the distinction is non-existent.
6. Forty-eight (48) percent of small businesses have a separate annual marketing budget within the firm’s overall budget.
7. Experience and customer observation are substantially more likely to influence small-business owner marketing decisions than formal, systematic approaches. Seventy-four (74) percent think it is important to rely on gut feel when making marketing decisions.
8. Small-business owners advocate a long-term business outlook.
9. Seventy-eight (78) percent of small employers think that adding innovative products/services is important to business success.
10. 87 percent agree that customers require businesses to be very flexible and adapt to special customer requirements.
11. More small employers intend their marketing efforts to lead customers (61%) than to respond to them (28%).

Where do you fit into all this?