Planning: Spiffing Up For Spring

Are your sales and marketing plans as bright, fresh and appealing as these Daffodils? Or more like a dried up bouquet of flowers that you haven't been able to throw out because they remind you of...something you can't seem to remember?

Or do you even have a plan?

My new online retail client Personalized Doormats, orginally contacted me to write two news releases per month as well as web and email blast content.

During our first meeting, I asked them how they currently integrated public relations (news releases, social media and media coverage) with other sales and marketing functions such as trade shows, email blasts, social media, promotions, special events, community relations, AdWords, etc. Their answer, "We don't. But we probably should. Can you help us with that?"

With their budget and goals in mind, I suggested they hire me to help them develop a sales and marketing plan the first month instead of writing news releases. So, we "worked together" the first month where I got their input and feedback. We had two, four-hour meetings; one, two-hour conference call; and four, one-hour weekly calls where I took them through a series of questions about their business, (past, present and future), competion, sales goals, personal business goals, products, customer service, a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis and more.

The end result, allowed me to take the information gathered to develop a six month sales and marketing plan, including a month-to-month timeline with activities and tactics. As well:

• They'd never thought about joining two key professional associations.
• Now, they are new members and have picked up new business from their memberships. 
• They have a blog, but rarely posted anything to it. 
• From new customer comments, product photos, special offers, tips, videos and news releases will soon begin being posted and in the next six months, as they build their business, they plan to hire me to "ghost write" blog postings on a regular basis.
• Their twitter and Facebook account was set up, but they had no idea how to use social media. As well, the sites were not set up or being monitored correctly for their type of business model. 
• Last week, we had a three-hour social media training session where I taught them how to brand their pages and how to use the various sites - twitter, Linkedin, Diggit, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook - the differences in the sites; kinds of communication messages to post (not overly sales-y, not hard news, but with the intent of it being interactive, educational and informative), how to integrate the various social media sites, fun tips and tools to manage them and how to post, paste, link and tweet from from a technical standpoint.

I am now writing news releases and also formulating a new sales program to reach a market segment they'd never thought about. Not only will it build my client's sales, but this program will allow this new BtoB market donate to their charity of choice while selling my client's product to their customers.

So plan your plan. Write your plan. And work your plan. With a plan, you will see where you are today, where you are going and next year, look back over a successful year and see what made the difference. Contact me today to spiff up your sales and marketing plan this Spring! And...while you are at it... Order a new doormat today and "Put a Spring In Your 'Door'step!"