Successful Marketing Requires Doing
Doing marketing is always the hardest part. Successful marketing essentially boils down to everything you DO or SAY that your ideal customer sees and hears. CEOs, business owners, entrepreneurs, managers, directors are all typically remarkable at their technical expertise, whatever that is. The point is that you mostly likely didn’t take on that responsibility or start the business because you love marketing.
Marketing is doing and doing leads to having – whether that’s revenue, profits, leads, or awareness.
Marketing strategies don’t fail in the mental creation. They fail in implementation. Ensuring effective implementation of marketing strategies is one of the highest payoff activities for success. A successful marketing plan will never produce results without successful execution behind it.
When it comes to getting marketing done, we’ve learned that start-ups and organizations can take their business to the next level by doing these three things.
- Choosing action items. The act of choosing, is the act of succeeding. When creating a marketing plan part of the deal is that you can’t get everything (tactical activities) that you possibly want done. The best way to approach the situation is by choosing marketing strategies and tactics that align with your business goals. Do you need press releases for awareness goals? Will the website need updating to capture qualified leads? Is researching main competitors a priority for communicating a unique position?
- Managing marketing activities. Measuring and control are parts of good management. Using a simple chart or marketing dashboard to monitor marketing initiatives and accountability will increase implementation effectiveness. If you don’t have a chart or dashboard, use the plan itself as a weekly review tool.
- Daily follow-ups. When it comes right down to it, marketing plans fail because those responsible for getting specific tasks done aren’t being followed up with. Following up and checking due dates on a regular basis will increase the effectiveness of your marketing. Poor execution will always trace back to poor follow-up. This is tough for start-ups and small business owners because of distractions, deliveries, and everyday business routines that have to be done.
The key to successful implementation of a marketing plan is execution, the actual doing of the planned marketing activities.
Initiatives don’t get completed by stating them on paper – they require an installation (action, management, and follow-up.)
