It’s a New Year, time for a New Plan
It is always good to take a retrospective look back at where you have been and analyze to see what you can do better in the new year. Many companies are looking to increase their marketing efforts and expand into social media. The good news is that it is not too late. In order to increase your success rate in keeping with a new initiative for 2013 it is important that you break your plan into small but achievable steps. That is how I am going to begin 2013, by taking the complex world of inbound marketing and social media and break it down into a step by step process. The end result will be a solid strategy and executable plan.
All this talk about Social Media and Inbound Marketing – where do you begin? Who knows how to put all the puzzle pieces together? Although basic Step 1 revolves around figuring out who your target customer is and learning about them. For your convenience, I have included a worksheet so that as new steps are introduced each day, it will be easy to put the plan together. Planning step 1
The first step in this planning phase is to figure out who your target customers are and try to capture as much info as you can about them. Here are some questions to ask yourself when you are trying to narrow down your target market:
- Knowing your industry and business, what are the problems that you solve?
- Are they best suited to Individuals or Businesses or both?
- Are there any geographic boundaries in pursuing your customers?
- Are there any particular groups you should be targeting?
- What is the age range of your target? Income range?
- Gender?
- Characteristics (sports, leisure, vacations) that work well with your products
- Is there a specific industry?
- Are there problems that you solve that no other company can?
- Small businesses, Large Businesses, Number of employees, Years in business, SIC code
- Are there areas that your competition is ignoring or targeting heavily?
- Are there technology advantages in a particular class or segment?
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Remember, this will be a simple step by step, small process that will produce measurable results in the end. Check back tomorrow when we will expand and build on plan. Thanks for visiting The Sales Plan, please click the subscribe link so that you will receive automatic updates. Also, please feel free to share success stories or comments.
