Make A Plan to Achieve Your Goals

It’s a new year. It’s time to set some goals, right?

Well, I have some thoughts on the matter of goals. Goals are great. They are supposed to help us reach higher than we might have otherwise. They should motivate us to improve. They are designed to inspire us.

At this time of year, entrepreneurs often set big goals such as increase sales by 50%, reduce expenses by 15%, hire a new person to handle x, y, or z. Running a business doesn’t allow for much reflection/planning time so when entrepreneurs actually take time away from working IN their business to work ON it I love it. It’s not easy to do.

But, here’s my frustration with setting goals. They are often really just dreams and if not achieved can be a real let down at the end of the year. Again, dreaming and setting big goals is great, but how will you actually get there? It’s like being in Maryland and setting a goal to vacation in California. If you’re going on vacation you look at your calendar and pick your dates, then you figure out how you’re going to get there selecting what makes sense for your preferences and budget. Then, where exactly will you go in California – it’s a big state. What hotel will you stay at? Will you need to rent a car? Where will you eat? What sites will you see? What activities will you enjoy? You make a plan.

Oddly, many people spend more time planning a vacation than planning how they are going to attain business goals.  I think it’s because they are afraid they will have to write volumes and do major number crunching. In addition, most business owners while responsible for marketing are not marketers and therefore avoid the unfamiliar territory completely.

Accomplishing revenue goals takes a solid marketing plan, not just a goal.  A marketing plan does not have to be hard.

3 Things You Must Do to Market Your Business

1. Eliminate the tasks that are wasting money – if it’s not delivering results, nix it!
2. Do more of the right things – if it’s delivering results, double down!
3. Build marketing systems so the right stuff happens like clockwork. Not only will you know exactly what to do, but you can delegate the tasks to employees.

Every business will utilize different marketing strategies to achieve their goals. The key is to start where your business is at this moment. There is no one size fits all. The good news is that in the amount of time it takes to plan a nice vacation you can build a simple, straight-forward marketing plan that helps you add money to your bottom line and helps you achieve your goals.

Marketing plans should be simple and outline all the resources, timing and talent you need to complete each strategy you embrace. They should not be long, wordy documents that drone on and on. Instead of a lengthy, verbose document consider using this as a guide:

4 Steps to a Simple Marketing Plan

1. Outline your strategies – pick only 3-5
2. List the tactics you’ll use to support each strategy
3. List the tools and resources you’ll use to complete the tasks within the tactics
4. Map out the timing and frequency of those tasks