My 2019 New Year's Bizolution

Hand’s up all the marketing consultants who find it hard to spend time marketing your own business!  

I see your hand in the red shirt, I see your hand over there, I see you in the back!

With the new year ahead, I’m thinking about my own business and how I’d like it to develop.  Each business is different and has different goals, but we all need to get there in the same way – with a defined strategy, and a well detailed plan of attack.

So this is my new year’s bizolution – to create time to do for myself what I do for other businesses. 

I’m tackling the Honey & Flint marketing strategy for 2019 and this is what I’m stepping out. 

1.    What is my budget?

My business is not a big one – actually you can’t get much smaller, it’s just me at this stage.  As such, my budget is quite modest.  But as any good marketing consultant knows, if you’re smart with what you have, then you can turn a small amount in a big success.  Defining what you want to spend, helps you determine the wise ways in which you are going to spend it. 

2.    What are my goals?

Be specific, and realistic.  For example:

• This year I’d like to increase my sales by 20%

• This year I’d like to take on 5 new clients

• This year I’d like to launch two new products.  

• This year I’d like to gain enough extra work to bring on a second staff member

Once you know your goals, you can start to determine how you are going to achieve them.

3.    Who is my target market?

You can actually over think the whole ‘target market’ thing.  In a nutshell, your target market is the group of people who are most likely to engage in your product, and hindsight is your biggest friend here.  Previously, have your biggest engagers been male or female? What is their general age bracket? Are they singles, parents or corporates? What industry do they work in?  

You should also be forward-thinking. Who are the individuals you think should be engaging with your product or service?  Are they new mums?  Have they started a new business?  Are they an established professional looking for new ideas?

4.    How can I reach them?

Once you know who you are looking to target, you just need to think about where you can reach them.  Are they big on social media? Do they travel by bus?  Are they local, and would they appreciate a personal introduction?  Do they read a certain type of magazine?  Are they your current one-off customers who could become regulars?  

5.    What marketing will I commit to in 2019?

There are a million ways to market, but setting good strategic steps to onboard your marketing is important for two reasons.  

• It is easier to manage a specific set of marketing tasks rather than going all out all at once and trying to manage EDM’s, social media, radio advertising, etc.  It’s going to end up being very stressful, and likely not very effective.

• If you implement your different marketing efforts step-by-step, you can effectively test what is working for your business.  For example, if you run radio advertising at the same time as you run a magazine ad, you need to be sure you know which one is leading people to your website.

For many of the organisations and business that I work for, I start by helping them determine their brand identity, so that we can then build a strong brand foundation.  Once you know who you are as a business, all of the above makes a lot more sense and things really start to fall into place.  

From there, I usually help create a strategy that tackles the five questions above and then begins to drill down on how to go to market.  And then a marketing plan which lays out all the things you want to achieve and how I’m going to help you achieve them.

So perhaps this year you want to kick off with social media marketing alongside a regular EDM piece.  Or perhaps you want to add to what you already have going by exhibiting in two business-aligned conferences.  

In 2019, make strategic marketing plans.  Be deliberate about what you are doing, and make sure you test its effectiveness.  If you can start there, you will really start to see your business flourish.

If all this is making you sweat with anxiety, email me, this is the stuff of my dreams.

All the best with your 2019 Bizolutions.