When it comes to marketing, it’s critical to remain flexible and adjust based on the known and unknown variables that can impact the successes of your plan.
As marketers, we all know this, but the reality is when things happen, change can oftentimes be difficult to navigate. These changes are all part of “optimizing” your plan. Optimized is defined: “to write or rewrite so as to maximize efficiency…”
Most of you that are reading this post signed up for my email newsletter because you were seeking guidance into writing a marketing proposal and you found this post: How to Write a Strong Marketing Proposal. First and foremost, I hope my template has helped you gain the business you hoped for. Others of you are here because I’ve been blogging since 2007 and you’ve signed up along the way. Regardless of how you got here, welcome.
In July of this year, I had an idea, a vision and some simple goals about my return to regular blogging, but something happened that derailed my plans. After a ten year fight with a brain tumor, my 37-year-old sister took a turn for the worse and in October we lost her. As you can imagine, this isn’t something that anybody can prepare for, nor would you want to, but the reality is, it happened, and I had to adjust my plans.
Today is November 17, 2014, and I’m reassessing everything. Grieving the loss of someone has a tendency to do this to you.
Why you should keep reading…
Over the past few months, I’ve followed up with almost every one of you asking questions about your needs, interests and wants. The feedback has been fun and because of it, a few repeating topics began to emerge:
- Research – How and where to find the best research to validate your ideas and strategies.
- Goals – How to identify what’s important to your clients or boss and put realistic and measurable goals in place to measure success by.
- Return on Investment – By far, this was the most frequent request…how to measure the return on your client or bosses investment.
Through my nearly 20 years of marketing, I have created a marketing approach that has come to serve me well. It’s helped me pitch clients, CEO’s, customers and win awards against top mass-market brands. I call this, the Full Cycle Marketing approach.
- Research & Development – How and where to find the best research to validate your ideas and strategies. Then using that intel, building a strong marketing strategy that will help you get the business you seek.
- Goals – How to identify what’s important and putting realistic and measurable goals in place to track impact.
- Execution – Everybody knows how to do marketing activity, but defining what, how and why can be hard to measure.
- Optimization – How to optimize your plans and strategies to adjust to market conditions, unexpected events and client goals.
- Analytics – In my nearly 20 years of marketing, this is hands-down the most overlooked element in the marketing cycle, and it’s probably the most important. The data you extract from your campaigns can and will often pave the way to new business and more successes.
Employing a strategy that involves all five of these elements will get your boss/client to say “yes” more often, and who doesn’t want that!
What’s Next
Starting today, I’m turning my focus to help you launch, grow and sustain your business by providing tips, tools and strategies in the Full Cycle Marketing process.
But, is this for me?
Marketing without a target audience is pointless, so in the tradition of marketing, the following people are who I’m catering my content to:
- Marketers in the corporate and professional space who are looking to understand every element of the five cycles of marketing or those who want to get ahead.
- Small business owners who are struggling to understand the evolving marketing landscape and how to use it grow.
- Startup entrepreneurs – I’ve helped launch over 75 products in the web, book, magazine (print & online), cable television, event and education markets, primarily using digital marketing tools.
- Non-Profit executives who are unclear on how to develop a growth and sustainability strategy
Let’s do this…together
Starting today, I’ll be posting one new article every Monday. If you’re interested, I invite you to stick around. If not interested, click here to unsubscribe. It’s that easy.
Next Monday, I’ll be posting an in-depth article on how to get started in the research and development phase of the Full Cycle of Marketing. You won’t want to miss it.
Finally…
The world of marketing and business is changing rapidly. You can expect that I’ll be here to help you navigate it, but what will maximize our collective experience is if we create a community of feedback and interaction through the comments section. I invite you to share your experience and perspective here; it will make us all better.
