Smart Marketing Reminder

Truly successful marketing efforts that stand above-the-pack are not accidents.  Often they are a strange combination of creative thinking, mulling,  imagining, planning, luck, hard work and careful execution.

Sometimes everything comes off without a hitch.  Other times, not.

And often when one starts a marketing project, the sense is that there is just too much to ever meet the deadline.  But then, you do.

You’ve worked hard.  It feels good to know that you were able to accomplish your marketing goal, whatever it might be.

Now Is The Time To Start Planning Your Marketing

I don’t want to the harbinger of bad news.  Nor do I want to add more to an already full plate.  BUT…now is the time to engage those little gray cells and to begin planning your marketing efforts for next year and figure out how to make it better.

Let me share a little family story.

Every July 4th, my Welsh and very pragmatic mother-in-law, Francis, never failed to remind us that:

Pretty soon it would be Christmas.

She was right, of course, but it sounded strange to start thinking about Christmas in July.

My husband attributed his Mother’s 4th of July Christmas reminder to the fact that this was the time when she would begin planning for her famous, or infamous, fruit cake.  As the story goes, she used to make a lethal, alcohol soaked fruit cake that weighed about 15 pounds by the time Christmas rolled around.

While many would ignore traditional fruit cake, few relatives or neighbors would ignore Francis’.  Apparently, one sip – ahem – one bite of Francis’ 100+ proof fruit cake made for some rocking good Holidays.

Needless to say, Francis’ fruit cake was a big success.

But It Takes Time

I tell you this story because the hardest and most time consuming part of marketing, smart marketing, is the up-front part.

This is where you have to spend time reviewing what worked, what didn’t and why.

It takes time to identify where your business is now and how far you want to grow.

You need time to let your imagination roam and to mull over the plethora of options.

Ideas are all around us, but you probably want ideas that will help you leap frog this year’s results.

Leap frog ideas are hard to identify and typically involve some risk.  You’ll need time to weigh the pros and cons.

Once you’ve identify your leap frog ideas, you need to lay out a plan of action and execute:

• the message, the creative
• the best time to launch to grab your audience’s attention and usurp your competition
• which combination of tools will you use
• how will you measure progress
• how to minimize risk with a Plan B
• executing all of the pieces so it comes off without a hitch

It all takes time.

In this day of instantaneous downloads, sharing, engaging, tweeting and posting, its easy to forget the time required for true marketing success.

So begin now.  Don’t allow your ideas and goals for your business to get pushed aside because you didn’t have enough time to plan and implement them.

Follow in Francis’ footsteps and get started now.

You should share your business goals for 2013 in the comments section below.  Go ahead. I’d love to hear what you have in store for next year.

Or you could share your favorite fruit cake recipe.  The choice is yours.

If you found this post interesting, join our list of readers and feel free to share this post with others.