When it comes to marketing your small business, ease of use is UBER-critical. Well, of course, right???
Because as the fearless leader of your small business, you’re already wearin’ a lotta hats…
From chief of janitorial services (mop + bucket in hand) to CFO (fingers blazing across your Texas Instruments calculator at lightspeed), and just about every other job designation in between.
In other words, you’ve got waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many tasks stacked up on your already heaping over professional plate.
So what’s the key to ease of use in marketing your business? In short, systemization. A systematic approach enables you to streamline and automate a whole lot of your marketing workload.
And how exactly do you “systematize” your marketing? Two word (or, concepts, I guess?): Planning + Scheduling.
“Is it REALLY that simply?” you’re asking yourself after you were totally gearing up to be wholly intimidated by a fancy buzz word like “systemization.” Yup, it’s REALLY that simple. Systemization boils down to effective planning and consistent scheduling.
But therein lays the rub… Systemization derails most small business owners because it requires more work up front to create a plan and establish a schedule. “I’ll just handle things as I go along…” is the typical small business owners attitude.
Meanwhile, with so many other tasks competing for your attention, important tasks, like marketing, slip through the cracks. That’s why laying effective groundwork up-front makes managing your marketing more efficient, less painless, and less likely to be overlooked.
So how does systemization work, practically speaking? Here’s a basic example of how systemization could apply to many small businesses…
Plot Your Marketing Plan
Everything in marketing begins with a strategy. And what is strategy, other than a fancy name for a “plan?” Streamlining your marketing is no different – it all starts with a plan.
To begin, write out, point-by-point, your marketing plan by answering the following questions:
== > What are your goals?
== > What do you need to do to achieve those goals?
== > How do you adjust, or pivot, if necessary, if you fail to achieve those goals?
== > How do you adjust, or pivot, if necessary, if you outpace your goals and succeed at far higher level than expected?
After you write-out your plan, read it over a couple of times, and then set it aside for a week. Let the material percolate through your brainpan, and give your subconscious a chance to deconstruct and evaluate your approach.
After your initial plan has filtered through your mental sieve, review your written document. If your subconscious has dredged up any relevant points over the intervening week, adjust your plan accordingly.
Next, zero in on the “what do you need to do to achieve these goals” component of your plan. Use the answer to that question to determine the marketing tactics best suited to target + convert your ideal customers.
With your ideal marketing tactics identified, it’s time to move on to Phase II of systematizing your marketing…
Create Your Marketing Schedule
Your marketing schedule is really just a mechanism to help you implement, manage and monitor your marketing.
Whatever your tactic(s) of choice –
== > Print ad campaigns
== > Direct mail
== > Broadcast email
== > SEO targeted blogging
== > Social media (organic or paid)
== > Google AdWords
– Formulate a defined schedule…
You can use Outlook, iCal, or whatever your calendar app you prefer, or just an Excel or Google doc to create a project management spreadsheet. Your scheduling mechanism doesn’t have to be complicated or involved. The intent is simply to capture dates and notes you can refer to on a regular basis.
Depending on your campaigns, your calendar or project management spreadsheet might look something like this…
Print ads: Scheduled reoccurring ad creation + prep time, submission dates and publication dates.
Direct mail: Scheduled reoccurring mailer creation + prep time, submission dates and mailing dates.
Broadcast email: Scheduled reoccurring mailer creation + prep time, campaign schedule (most ESPs – MailChimp, Aweber, Constant Contact – feature campaign dashboards that enable you to schedule and track campaigns) and publication dates.
Blogging: Content calendar (a list of topics and corresponding publication dates), scheduled content creation + prep time to format posts and schedule publication dates (most blogging platforms feature a publication dashboard that allows you to save posts as drafts, and schedule future publication dates).
Social media (status updates): Create a content calendar (similar to your blog content calendar) with list of curated links + corresponding introductory comments, schedule link collection, content creation + prep time to format updates and schedule publication (using a social scheduling tool like Hootsuite or Buffer),
Social media (paid ads): Scheduled reoccurring ad creation + prep time (schedule in your personal calendar or project management spreadsheet), format ads in the advertising dashboard and schedule publication dates (most social media platforms feature advertising dashboards that allow you to format, schedule, monitor and revise your social ads).
AdWords (Google, Yahoo, Bing): Scheduled reoccurring ad creation + prep time to format ads in the AdWords dashboard and schedule publication dates (Google and other search engines feature advertising dashboards that allow you to format schedule, monitor and revise your search engine ads).
Again, This is Just An Example…
Your calendar or project management spreadsheet all depends on your business’s individual needs. Above is just an example of how a marketing schedule might look. Point being, the outline gives you an idea of how establishing a schedule an reduce the heavy lifting of managing marketing campaigns.
Need Help Systemizing Your Marketing?
Struggling to stay on top of your marketing? Systemization – planning + scheduling – your marketing is the key to improving efficiency and increasing conversion. If you need some guidance to systematize your marketing, drop by my Google+ page and hit me up – I’m here to help!