Anyone been having trouble with the ios7 update on their iphone? Text messages that haven’t sent, lost text messages and my mailbox showing I have unread messages when I haven’t? It seems like Apple were in such a rush to get this new majorly hyped update out there that they didn’t fully test it or iron out the problems! This can be true when it comes to your marketing too.

A lot of people can be so keen to get their message out there that they go out all guns blazing and don’t really plan their marketing or have any kind of strategy!

We’ve come up with 10 Top Tips to consider when planning your marketing strategy….

1. A good place to start is with a SWOT Analysis, this will help to identify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
2. The next thing you need to think about is your Brand – what are your brand values? These will be at the heart of every type of communication you make. Create a ‘Brand Personality Statement’ this will sum up your brand values in a sentence and will be useful to refer back to, to remind yourself what should be the essence of all your communications.
3. Find out who your customers are and segment them accordingly – identify their needs and how you can fulfil them, identify how you will communicate with them – what publications do they read? What events do they attend?
4. Evaluate the competition –  look at their website, this is like the shop window of their business – how do they diazepam buy now present themselves? How are you different to them? What publications do they feature in, where do they advertise etc
5. What is your USP? Your Unique Selling Point – what differentiates you from the competition?
6. Multichannel your marketing – effective marketing uses many channels to influence its audience – email, blogs, direct mail, advertising, social media – the more channels, the greater the audience.
7. Keep your plan focused – make sure all your efforts are focused on a single goal, whether that is to grow business with existing customers, find new customers, or develop new niches for your product or service. Write down your marketing goal, and evaluate each marketing activity to make sure it aligns with it.
8. Set yourself time constraints. Each marketing activity should have a date to be completed by, this gives you a clear goal to work to.
9. Budget – have a clear budget for each marketing goal/activity, even if that ‘budget’ is your time.
10. Measure, reassess and revise your plan constantly – it is not a static document. Note down what marketing efforts have worked and which were a waste of time. As your business evolves, so will your marketing needs.

Going back to the Apple example – it’s all about testing to see what works best for your business, trial and error! Don’t rush your marketing – planning it effectively will leave less room for error. If you need help putting together your Marketing Plan, then call the experts. Bare Bones Marketing will help set you on the right track!