By Ahmed al-Akber/Manama
|
|
“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” - Peter Drucker.
When it comes to marketing, every ounce of implementation is worth two of planning. Therefore the success of your marketing comes down to what you manage to achieve, not what you write down as a plan. It’s important to remember that implementing a marketing plan is a process. It will evolve as your product or service evolves, and must continue so long as you want to achieve better marketing results.
Here are six things to do to make sure your marketing plan gets implemented:
1. Keep it simple. The simpler the plan, the easier it will be for all those involved to implement it. Understanding the goals and milestones that need to be achieved is critical to implementation, and it will be easier to explain these to your employees and customers if the plan is not complicated.
2. Break objectives down into manageable parts. Don’t try to accomplish everything in one day. Breaking your plan down into bite-size chunks will make it more manageable and will feel less overwhelming. For example, set aside 30 minutes each day to focus on your marketing goals. That way you’ll be more consistent and predictable with your marketing, and soon it will build into a habit.
3. Set a deadline. Never leave important tasks open to interpretation as far as when they should be done. Setting deadlines and reminding yourself and your team of them will help. Making team members accountable is also very important. The absence of this follow-up - of not holding people accountable to hard deadlines - will almost ensure a lack of implementation and mediocre success.
4. Outsource as necessary. Do what you do best, and outsource the rest. For example, if you are good at creating content, such as articles, but don’t have the time to market this content or post it on your website, outsource this to someone else. This will free up your time so you can focus on doing the things you are good at (and like to do), and not the things you aren’t.
5. Overcome distractions. Here is where most people fail with their marketing. They answer telephones, respond to e-mails, or ‘accept’ other distractions, which take them away from the most important things they should be doing to grow their business. One way to overcome this is to completely unplug – switch off phones and e-mail for select times of the day so you can concentrate on the things that matter most.
6. Monitor progress. Assessing what is working and what is not is the most important thing you can do to find out that all important answer to the question of which 20% of activities yield 80% of the results for your business. Double up on those 20% of activities, forget the rest and you’ll significantly grow your sales and be able to go home early!
Effective marketing is all about implementation. It never needs to be perfect, it just needs to be done!
♦ Ahmed al-Akber is the managing director of ACK Solutions, a firm that helps companies to improve their marketing and sales results by offering more effective ways attracting customers and significantly better products and services. Ahmed has worked internationally in marketing, sales, and strategic planning at companies such as the Coca-Cola Company, Philip Morris International and Dell. Questions or comments can be sent to Ahmed on [email protected]
