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.

We all get so many emails in the day. You are likely deleting several or ignoring a majority of the emails in your inbox. When this is your reality it's hard to believe that email is still considered (based on statistics) the best way to communicate with your community.

A couple of things need to be in place to make this accurate for you...  ​

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?...

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...

Businesses and nonprofits often ask me what they should be focusing on when it comes to marketing. It’s a good question because 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 of course what you are selling or asking money for. ALL of these factors have to be taken into consideration when figuring out your marketing mix. However, no matter what size you are, no matter what you sell or who your market is, there is ONE thing that you absolutely have to do...

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...

As we slowly creep in on the last quarter of the year, are you left reminding yourself that tomorrow you need to work on the marketing tasks you have been putting off?   Whether you are a new business or an established business, marketing is an essential part of your businesses' success. The average consumer spends almost 2 hours a day surfing social media for new content. Getting the right message to your connections at the right time can be tricky, especially if you don't have the time, don't understand, or maybe don't even like marketing...