Marketing Strategy for 2012 – Do You Have It Ready?

So as we get ready to hit December and start thinking about the New Year I decided that I will spend my December getting ready for 2012.

Everyone is different but I like to “stew” on things so I generally make a short list of things I want to accomplish, no more than 10 and I let them settle into my brain. As they work their way around the various neuropathways things pop up. I jot them down.

Some folks use digital I like hands on so I’m using a Moleskine to capture my ideas.

Starting out a month ahead gives me plenty of time to know what my strategy will be so I can hit the ground running just as soon as January 2^nd hits.

Marketing is always a big item on my list, it should be on yours too. Since I believe it is the most critical tool for success I thought I’d outline a strategy for tackling your marketing plan for the next 12 months.

This is the exact same method I use with clients although in a client situation there is a lot of feedback which makes the process a bit more dynamic and targeted, I’ll offer up some suggestions at the end to help you achieve a similar results.

Here we go!

Marketing Strategy for the New Year

The first part of the process is to determine and re-emphasize the basics because these can change over the course of 12 months. A careful review of your target (ideal customer) and your differentiating factors are key. The emphasis should be on who you want to work with. Taking some time to think about who you have worked with over the last 12 months and determining which of those clients you most liked working with and helped out the most should be the primary source of your target’s description. Outline who this person is and why they are ideal. Then carefully review what your offerings were for the year, what worked, what didn’t… get those out on paper as well.

The second part consists of creating a new action plan. The first item on the plan should be a clear description of your ideal customer. Based on your review, you should be able to create a very clear picture of who you want to work with for the coming year, you should write it out and post it somewhere that you can see it everyday.

The next item in your action plan should be your differentiating or positioning statements. These are the things that you do that set you apart from everyone else in the marketplace that is selling what you are selling. These statements should also be front and center, posted somewhere.

It is important to embody your positioning statements 100%.

The final piece of the action plan are the tools, tactics and strategies that you will use to market your business. List them out.

Will you use Twitter or Facebook or both? Will you get out and network? Will you start a newsletter?

After all your strategies and tactics have been listed out it’s time to schedule them. How often will you tweet or post on facebook? How frequently will your newsletter go out? How many events will you attend?

Outline your general ideas about what you want to accomplish and post them as well. You can use your calendar program for this or simply put it on the whiteboard so you see it regularly.

Sounds straightforward right? And it is. Two pieces with steps for each.

The amount of time you spend on it determines your success. The strategy is easy the application is sometimes not as easy.

That is why it’s good to have someone to help you through the process and it’s a critical part of what I work on with new clients. But you don’t necessarily need a coaching program to get the much needed motivation and feedback required to keep a good marketing plan working all year.

Start with your mastermind group. They will know your business and will likely be able to provide feedback and suggestions on your strategy and plan.

Consider putting together a small group yourself if you don’t have a mastermind group.

Look to folks you network with or who also have businesses and can do their marketing strategy plan with you so that you can help each other out.

The key is to find someone to bounce ideas off of and to help with suggestions on what to include and how to make it efficient and easy to implement so that you’ll keep up with the plan all year.

If you need some strategies and tactics to get you started on what to include in your action plan, check out Red.Hot.Marketing in Minutes, it’s a collection of easy to implement tactics and strategies to market your business in 10 minutes. As I work through my marketing strategy for 2012, I’ll keep you updated and posted on new tools and strategies as I come upon them.

Get to it, let’s make 2012 a Red.Hot Year!