How are you going to grow your business in 2017? Did you set your goals? Do you know how to get started? To grow your business better this year, you need to objectively review the success you had in the past and plan how to get to where you want to be at the end of 2017. Start your plan today by reviewing your resources and your marketing tools as well as your statistics and how your marketing tools performed.
I meet with my regular clients for our planning meeting in December or early January to review our successful promotions and compare them with sales or fundraising dollars. Are they are growing or are their non-profit donations and volunteers increasing? Did we meet the goals we set for 2016? If not, we review which months or promotions missed their mark. But mostly, we look at our successes and build on that experience by duplicating it for other months or other opportunities. That also includes looking at our buyers or donors and seeing if we have found a new audience we can expand upon for 2017.
Whether you are a new business or an existing business, the key is to planning for 2017 is to project your sales or fund-raising goals and set milestone goals to help achieve or exceed them in 2017. By reviewing your past performance, we can determine what is working and what is not working and whether you are taking advantage of today’s marketing tools. We also look at the competition for opportunities we may be able to identify. By reviewing all stats from website views to social media and newsletter sign ups we look at results in dollars before we set you new goals. Then we set new goals and determine the best marketing strategy to get your company the results they need. The planning process makes all the difference and provides a guideline by which to measure progress each month with hard statistics.
Much like setting weight loss goals in January, you need to shed the least helpful promotions and replace them with marketing tools that achieve the actions that lead to sales or donation (clicks to your website, shopping cart or donor button). To help you plan ahead, I have designed 4 complimentary January workshops to help you plan a smarter marketing plan for 2017. In addition to providing you with a marketing checklist for 2017, the local workshops will feature a live demonstration on launching mobile responsive Email Marketing campaigns to increase your results: Join my local Jumpstart Workshops and live demonstrations in Bellflower: Jumpstart 2017 on 1/10/17 or in Join me and the SBDC in Manhattan Beach on 1/19/17 with 3 Speakers from Crowdfunding to Market Planning and a Live Demo or come learn to Win the Battle of the Inbox for Online Marketing with the Torrance Chamber of Commerce on 1/25/17. If you cannot come to plan in person, consider attending my online Junpstart 2017 Marketing Webinar on 1/11/17. Or better yet, contact me (liz@adteamla.com) to help you customize your marketing plan for 2017.
Liz Harsch is a trainer for small businesses with SCORE, SBDC, SBA, Cities and County outreach and MWD, Constant Contact, APICS plus many Chambers of Commerce since 2008. She owns Tailor-Made Advertising in Torrance, California and can be reached at 310-791-6300 or by email at tmade.mkt@verizon.net.
