Tip of the Month: Christmas & your Marketing Plan
I thought this month I’d just give a few pointers about the importance of a Marketing Plan. With August and the Summer Holidays receding into the past, we entering one of the busiest times of the year and planning is everything.
Why you need a Marketing Plan:
In the world of Advertising you need to be ahead of the game, what you advertise today you hope to sell tomorrow… but all the effort of getting that product to market should have already happened.
If you’re an author you will have written the book and the same is true if your a manufacturer,shop or are dealing in hard products, you will have already invented, made or sourced your products. Only the services industry might be let off this hook, but usually they too have peak periods that need to be catered for.
This is where the Marketing Plan comes in, a simple list of months with your key activities is all you really need. Just knowing vaguely the type of thing you may want to do is all you need.
Right now – it’s Christmas you need to be ready NOW!
What’s in a Marketing Plan:
At it’s most basic you just need a list of months with a rough schedule of what you want to achieve. People go to all lengths to produce targets, business plans and schedules, that’s great, it can be complicated and usually the bigger the organisation, but at the very least a single sheet of paper is all you need.
Put it into an Excel spreadsheet – now it’s on your computer and you can start to build on it, have ideas and plan a bit of what you might need.
Your Website and the Marketing Plan:
Now, I’m going to stick to digital marketing and let you decide about your off-line aims (that bit is up to you). Your website – if you can update it yourself great – start thinking of ideas, if you can’t you need to allow three things to be prepared for something like Christmas.
- Time – without a doubt the most important aspect from a website point of view – it can’t happen overnight, these days it has to be an integral part of your marketing plan… I would say you need to be at least 3 months ahead for an effective plan.
- Budget – you need to decide well in advance if there is any budget, can you edit things for yourself, can you go the extra mile a produce more complex content (Video, Flash) or should you repeat last years campaign. So money will be needed and allowed for.
- Quality – be prepared – the more you plan, the more you gather content the better, the more precise your instruction to your team the better, trying to build a website on the bases of a 1 liner email is not going to happen.
In the notes above I have basically said to plan for Christmas, Easter, Summer Sales, Spring Boost you need to allow me (your website designer); time, money and quality.