Is your marketing ready for a new year?

marketing process

Use Marketing to Reach Your Business Objectives

If you know us here at Stevens 470, you also know what big fans we are of multichannel marketing. So with the new year just around the corner we want to remind you to get your marketing plans in order.

Given that we all have limits on our time and resources, deciding among all the available marketing channels can be a challenge. Online advertising and social media continue to evolve and offline channels are changing as well. You can start planning by defining your marketing objectives and clarifying the most important goals for the coming year. Here are several core questions to ask when doing a marketing review:
  • what are my major business objective for 2012?
  • how is my brand doing in today's economy?
  • what changes in the marketplace are affecting my product/service?
  • is my current audience the same?
  • are there new audiences for my product/service?
  • what message will ring true and show the benefits of my product/service?
  • what media channels will best reach my audience?

Make Your Marketing Plan Multichannel

Developing your plan will include defining your objectives, analyzing the marketplace, finding an audience, creating a strategy and effectively implementing that strategy. Using every available marketing channel will help you reach your current clients and target audience. Take the time to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each channel. Take advantage of every channel opportunity and be sure to have a presence in all the channels that your customers use.

Use Push and Pull Marketing Activities

When developing your strategy, include both push and pull marketing activities. Push marketing refers to pushing your message out to your target audience. You take an action that puts your message in front of them, for example you send a postcard, run a radio ad, or send out a broadcast email. Pull marketing activities are used to draw your target audience into your major marketing channels so you can have a larger dialogue with them. Social media is a powerful pull marketing activity that continues to grow.

Allocate Your Resources

With a plan in place you can allocate your resources to the projects of greatest priority. Having determined and visualized the end result, you can plan the steps needed to get there. Each marketing decision can be made within the framework of “does this marketing activity bring us closer to our business goal?"

I encourage you to start on your marketing plan today. It doesn't need to be a fancy document but it does require serious thought and evaluation. Take the time to gain clarity and purpose for the year ahead. 


To learn more tips, come to our next Coffee Hour:
Is Your Marketing Ready for a New Year?
December 13, 2011 | 8:30 - 10:00am | Stevens 470
register today >

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