 In the spring of 2019, I was taking a much-needed hike with a good friend and I was going on about how I felt like nothing was going right for me. Even though I had just completed the 28 Day Marketing Challenge program with rave reviews and launched the Women Entrepreneurs Circle—not to mention my daughter was crazy fun—I was still feeling as though I was falling down a dark hole with no end in sight. I told her that this feeling of uncertainty and instability sparked anxiety and somehow managed to crush my self-confidence. Though I was doing so many great things and living a seemingly awesome life, I felt things were spiraling out of control and I was headed towards a slow doom.
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 Businesses and nonprofits often ask me what they should focus on when it comes to marketing. That’s a great question; how you spend your time and energy is very important--but what goals and tasks should you prioritize?
The answer depends on where you are in your marketing business, the size of your company or organization, who your target market is, and what you are selling. ALL of these factors have to be taken into consideration when figuring out your marketing plan. However, no matter what size you are, no matter what you sell or who your market is, there is one VITAL component that can make or break your marketing efforts and investment. You can have the best marketing channels and a huge budget, but if this ONE component is missing, your marketing strategies will fail.  It flew by didn't it? The year is almost over. For businesses and organizations this means the thinking and brainstorming for 2020 is beginning. You might not be writing your plan just yet. But, you may have started thinking about what to do in 2020. That's good, because before jumping into planning, you absolutely want to do the necessary thinking. When you THINK strategically, you start asking yourself questions and questions lead to ideas, solutions, and innovations.
How do you start generating the right questions that will lead you to fresh new ideas and strategies for the new year? The questions come when you sit down with your 2019 plan and start looking at what you've done. But I can tell you that there are essentially 4 key questions to ask before you start making plans for marketing in 2020. These 4 questions will enable you to examine and critique your marketing plan so that new ideas and strategies emerge. These 4 questions may also help to solidify your direction and give reason for sticking with the plan as is, which could be just as useful, if not more. So let's get started shall we?...  Here we are the day before Thanksgiving and on the cusp of the holiday season. I recommend businesses and nonprofits increase their communications during this time of year. Not thoughtless emails just because you are supposed to send something out. But, a well crafted message that is of tremendous value to your community. I wrote a blog post about how to discover what is valuable to your audience here. Once you have a good idea of what your community is asking you to speak with them about, that's what you focus on.
So getting back to the holiday season, in my last email, PART 1, I told you there are 3 strategies you need to be implementing in order to end the year strong with sales and revenue if you are a business, with donations and gifts if you are a nonprofit. The top 3 strategies are a referral strategy, email strategy, and event strategy. Then, I gave you my tips and actions steps to implement a strong referral strategy. Today, for Part 2, I tell you about implementing a successful 4th quarter email strategy...  How are you feeling about the progress you've had this year in your business or organization? If you haven't quite hit your revenue and growth goals for 2018, then, I'd like to recommend some key strategies you can implement right away so that you can close out the year strong. These are strategies you should be implementing throughout the year, but they are particularly helpful when you want to create quick revenue growth. The three strategies are referral strategy, email strategy, and event strategy.
Today I am going to focus on referral strategy. Stay tuned for my upcoming newsletters to get details on the other 2...  I know you've had days like this. In fact, they can last for longer than just a few days. It's those days that really test you due to some hardship in your life. It becomes so hard to get motivated and you just can't seem to get anything done. You know you have to do these things, it's your job or you made a promise and you are a person of integrity. Of course, as luck has it, your motivation usually starts drying up right around the time something big is supposed to happen at work or in your business. Your non profit may have that big capital campaign coming up, or you are launching a new program in your business, you have a brand new marketing campaign to develop for the new product you created...but, life is happening too. Your child is sick at home, things aren't going so well at home, you were in a car accident, something major needs to be fixed in the house, or a family member is ill. These stressors can lead to poor sleep quality or in many cases you are not sleeping at all. And, I've learned that a lack of motivation in one area of my life stems from neglecting other things like exercise, eating well, and sleeping well. But it doesn't need to get to that. And if it does get to that, you can get out of it. Further, I'm here to tell you that you can stay motivated and be productive with your work and career tasks when you are going through something tough personally...
 We are living and conducting business in a new economy. In this economy many of the old rules just do not apply. But, far too often, I run into businesses or organizations that are stuck in the habit of doing things the old way. I'm not here to blame, because many of these organizations and many of the marketing professionals and firms out there are still practicing some very old principles. These principles are still taught in MBA level textbooks across the country. So today, I want to help you break out of that cycle and emerge into the new economy. But, first you have to learn what it is that you are doing wrong. Which is why, I am going to share to with you the top 4 things you should stop doing in your marketing right away...
 Even though fall is now upon us and we are already in our 4th quarter, it is not too late to do some creative marketing planning to close out the year and hit some of those financial and business goals. A great strategy for getting organized so that you are on top of your marketing for the rest of the year is to create a marketing schedule.
You are likely implementing several different marketing strategies, from social media, to emails and PR. Therefore, writing down all that needs to take place and when it all should happen will make it much easier to do what you need to do to stay consistent and get results to your bottom line. A marketing schedule makes it especially easy for you and your team to collaborate and work together towards the goals of the business or organization...  Conducting a review of your plan in any area of your life can be extremely valuable. It was my ticket to obtaining big results. Keep reading and you'll learn why.
Often times, we don't really know if something is working or not. As we learned last week, things don't always go according to plan, and you don't know that unless you really start looking at what is and what isn't working. Even if you don't have anything written down in the form of a formal plan, you can still take advantage of the many benefits of reviewing what you've done so far. Here are 5 reasons why reviewing and revising is so vital to creating and maintaining success and obtaining big results in your work and life...  I learned the hard way that you can't always get things exactly as you plan. In fact I still don't get it. By nature, I am a planner. I love to make plans. I have big business growth plans, to my meditation plan, down to planning out how I am going to clean and organize my closet!
I love planning tools too. There was a time when I had so many planners, I couldn't keep track of all my plans. Though that crazy multiple planners phase has passed, I still plan out all sorts of things in my ONE journal. And though I have these amazing plans, it has become clearer and clearer that not everything goes according to plan. I have learned to embrace and celebrate accomplishing the goal. Whether it went according to plan becomes irrelevant for the most part. I also learned that it is still VERY important to plan and planning is my NUMBER ONE time saving strategy. I'll tell you why... |
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Copyright © 2019| Firefly Strategies. All rights reserved. | photos by Genevieve Russell of storyportraitmedia.com
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