Copied from the internet – its a very good article
Marketing your business is something that has to be done consistently. If you want to continue to reach new audiences, grow your following, and get more customers – you have to strategically put your business in front of them!
If you want to build a strong brand, marketing needs to be a part of your annual, monthly, weekly, and daily tasks to ensure you are building that foundation.
Where most people go wrong is they don’t know HOW or WHAT to do to market their businesses – monthly, weekly, or daily. In fact, some of the most common questions I hear from business owners are:
• How do I market my business?
• There’s so many things to do – what’s most important and what do I focus on?
• How can I make a big impact in a short amount of time…. (This one is the most common because you’re probably more concerned with the actual running of your business, right?)
• What will get me the BIGGEST results?
While I can’t answer all of these I can get you started and tell you the marketing tasks you need to do EVERY MONTH to get the best results for your business.
Here are the 6 Marketing Tasks You Have to Do Every Month to get consistent results for your business:
1) PLANNING –
This is a VITAL part of your marketing and most often overlooked. I get it can be overwhelming but I promise, once you have a plan – it will be so much easier to follow.
I always say:
You have to know where you’re going before you can get there!
Think of it like pulling out the map before you go on a road trip. You have to plan out which streets to take to get you to your destination, right? And once you have your plan, you can get exactly where you need to be. It’s the same with planning for your business.
So now you’re probably thinking, WHAT do I plan?
Start by planning out your objectives for the month. What do you need to achieve? BE SPECIFIC.
Here’s an example:
Grow Facebook by 1,000 new fans vs Grow Social Media Fan Base
By specifying Facebook, I know I need to focus my efforts on that ONE platform and can make a strategy that meets that exact objective versus being a little bit everywhere.
Here is a quick brainstorm on objectives you might have for your monthly marketing planning session:
• Launching a new product, service, or program? (You’ll have to incorporate planning promotions around this launch)
• Get 1,000 new followers on Facebook
• Create a new ad campaign promoting our new product line
• Design new online branding for cohesive customer touch points
• Grow our email list by 25%
• Generate 10,000 unique website visitors
• Get 20 new paying customers
• Create a Holiday Promotion (Valentine’s Day, 4th of July, Christmas, etc..)
• Host a Customer Appreciation Day to get referrals from existing and past clients
Once you have your objections for the month, focus on 1 – 2 main objectives. Your marketing needs to be FOCUSED and this will help you stay on track instead of being overwhelmed or scattered.
After you narrow down your 2 objectives, you can then plan out how you’re going to achieve them. Everything you do for the month will center around these objectives.
Your blog posts, your emails, and your social media content should all be working in support of your main goal.
Here’s an example:
Objective: Get 1,000 new followers on Facebook
Your marketing tactics plan might look like this:
Marketing Plan:
• Host a Facebook Giveaway
o Entrants must like the page and share the Facebook Giveaway to enter (This will allow their social media networks to see it and enter the giveaway also!)
• Email our existing email list encouraging them to enter the Giveaway, which gets them to like our Facebook page and share with their friends, which helps us hit our goals.
• Run a Facebook Like Ad to get more likes on the page
See how once we decided what we wanted to achieve, we could break down the steps to get there?
Now, if you’re REALLY looking for help with a marketing plan and you want one that’s literally DONE FOR YOU monthly marketing, Monthly Marketing Solved will do that and so so much more.
2. SOCIAL MEDIA
Social Media has become a phenomenal tool for business owners to connect with their potential customers. This is where many business owners struggle. They don’t have the bandwidth to create or find new content, create custom graphics, schedule it or even post it! I get it, but you simply can’t afford to ignore it.
Social Media HAS to be incorporated into your monthly marketing and most importantly – you have to be consistent.
I’ve covered this extensively here but it’s worth repeating, YOU HAVE TO BE ACTIVE ON SOCIAL MEDIA. Have to – I’m not taking no for an answer.
You will have to invest some time into social media and the most important thing to remember is you have to be consistent. You can’t just post once a month or every few days, you have to post at least once a day. This is A LOT of content you’ll need to share but that’s because your social media will make the biggest impact in your results for the month.
Imagine your target audience is a stay at home mom. She checks her social accounts in the morning and checks them in the evening.
If you only post once a day, and it’s not when she’s online, she will never see your post.
Let’s look at it another way: You post once a day, you reach 100 people with that post. You post again and reach 70 people.
By posting twice, you’ve reached 170 people.
Any time you can reach more people, that is a strategy you should use.
SOCIAL MEDIA RECOMMENDATIONS:
CREATE YOUR CONTENT IN ADVANCE OR USE A DONE FOR YOU SERVICE (LIKE, MONTHLY MARKETING SOLVED) THAT CREATES THE CONTENT FOR YOU AND YOU CAN SIMPLY SCHEDULE THE CONTENT TO POST EVERY DAY. HUGE TIMESAVER!
You will see a HUGE improvement when you use social media consistently so if you haven’t already, take the leap and go for it! You have nothing to lose.
3) ADVERTISE
Advertising should be done every single month. Yup, every single month! Your marketing budget should include advertising dollars to ensure you are GROWING and getting in front of a new audience. When you reach more people, more people know about your business, which means more people can buy from you. Now, your budget doesn’t have to be thousands or even hundreds of dollars. You can make a significant impact with just a few dollars a day.
In fact, with social media advertising an option, you can advertise on Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram for as low as $1 a day!! The return is well worth the cost.
Let’s say with your $1 a day advertisement, you reach 5,000 new people (Meaning, 5,000 people see your ad) – and just ONE of those people buy a $30 product. Your ad is paid for and anything else you sell becomes PURE profit.
There is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to advertising but it’s worth the time investment to learn these platforms for your business.
4) PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS
Ok, you’re probably thinking – duh, of course I need to promote my business every month. BUT, what I see from several business owners is they don’t balance their promotion.
They either only use social media to promote, promote, promote – or they’re too scared they’ll lose fans and they NEVER promote. Or maybe 1 promo and that’s it.
This is going to go back to marketing tactic #1 Planning, but you have to integrate your promotions in your business.
Follow the 80/20 rule of thumb, 80% of the time you post valuable – engaging content for your fans. 20% of the time you promote your business.
5. EMAIL
Email is a marketing tool that you HAVE to start using! Email marketing is alive and well, in fact, it converts. Here’s just one stat that should grab your attention:
“Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter” – – McKinsey
Email is effective because it’s a step that comes after someone finds your business and continues the relationship. It’s unlikely a client just magically joins your email list, right? Instead, they probably saw you somewhere online, maybe in your store, an ad, or on social media. They learned more about you, liked what you had to offer – and decided to opt in to your email list for an incentive or maybe just to stay up to date with you.
THEY made the choice to agree to get more information – this is a BIG deal because once they decide to trust you, they’re more likely to BUY from you.
So if you’re not already using email marketing, stop what you’re doing and get started!
Give people online a way to connect with you via email. Offer them a discount, an incentive, a free report, a free sample – something in exchange for their email address. Then, use email to communicate with them every month! Stay on their radar and make offers.
Don’t rely solely on your social media to get your marketing messages out there. By capturing people who are visiting your website or seeing you on social media – you are creating new opportunities for more business.
Not sure when or what to email? Monthly Marketing Solved lays out the exact plan for you.
6) REVIEW
At the end of your month, REVIEW your stats.
• Look at your numbers – how much did you improve over 30 days?
o Get SPECIFIC with your numbers:
Sales
New Customers / Lost Customers
Website Traffic
Email Subscribers
Advertising Dollars
Advertising Results
Social Media Followers total and per network
Monthly Profit or Monthly Losses
Expenses
• Record the numbers – write them down!
• Did you hit your goals and objectives you set at the beginning of the month? (Why / Why not?)
• Based on these results, what works? What didn’t?
• Based on these results, what do you want to focus on next month?
This is not the fun part of marketing but it will certainly give you a lot of data to make the next decisions in your business.
NOW THAT YOU KNOW THE 6 MARKETING TASKS YOU HAVE TO DO EVERY MONTH, YOU’LL START SEEING SOME GREAT RESULTS. IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A SHORT CUT, YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT MONTHLY MARKETING SOLVED. THIS WILL TAKE A LOT OF THE GUESSWORK OUT OF HOW TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS EVERY MONTH. YOU CAN GET A DONE FOR YOU MONTHLY MARKETING PLANNING CALENDAR, DONE FOR YOU SOCIAL MEDIA GRAPHICS SO YOU CAN JUST ADD YOUR LOGO AND POST, EVEN TRACKERS AND WORKSHEETS TO HELP YOU STAY FOCUSED ON YOUR GOALS EVERY MONTH!