If you did, what needs to change now?
Did your marketing last year deliver the results you wanted? Or did you struggle to maintain consistency, relevance and results?
Minuteman Press had some gratifying marketing hits last year – and some spectacular misses!
We probably learned most from the ones that didn’t work, and some of these mistakes:
- Not planning far enough ahead, so every activity wasn’t goal directed, and sometimes implementation was done in haste.
- Putting our marketing eggs in too few baskets
- Occasionally being unclear on who we really wanted to buy from us – so not being totally effective in putting ourselves in our customers’ shoes.
- Not always linking what we did online to customer actions in the real world – and vice versa
- Being distracted by the next shiny marketing object. Fun, but not always productive.
- Giving up too soon, rather than being patient and persistent
What will we do differently this year? Here are my 6 golden rules for this year’s marketing program.
- Marketing plan for both online and offline activity complete before the end of January. Be clear on the ultimate benefit we offer, and the action we’d like readers or viewers to take before we start.
- Spread the word through multiple channels both online and in the real world. Integrate our activities so they pull together, rather than being a patchwork of tactics.
- Understand that we have several different types of customer, each with different problems and different needs. With that in mind, dive deeper to make our marketing messages and product offerings much more specific.
- Ensure that every online message has an invitation to connect with us by phone, email or in person. And that every face to face or print message also encourages online visits.
- Stay focused, and don’t stop until each step is fully implemented. Enough said!
- Be surprising, unusual, innovative, witty – and ideally, all of these things. But most importantly, keep offering value over and over again.
Those are our rules for this year. What will yours be?
