The Simple Trick to Creating a Winning Marketing Plan and Reaching Your Goals

You tell yourself you want to be successful. So do most people.

But how many actually invest the time and energy to plan their marketing to reach their goal of success? With the start of a new year coming up, this is a great time to put together your marketing plan for the next 12 months.

Don’t just say “I want to make more money” or “I want to be rich” or “I want to have sales of $45,000 per month.” That’s not a plan.

A real plan has targets, dates and detailed marketing strategies and actions that move you closer to your goal every day. And if you move closer to your goal every day, the year will fly by before you know it, and you’ll look back this time next year and celebrate your achievements, success and of course bigger bank account and better lifestyle.

Imagine how that will feel! Here’s a simple trick to setting a plan that motivates you, keeps you on track and helps you reach your goal: Start your marketing plan with the END goal in mind. Then, ask yourself questions to make your goal truly measurable, such as:

• What is your target for revenue?

• For profits?

• How much do you want to get in new sales?

• How many new clients? (NEVER look at anyone as just ‘a customer’!)

• What is the lifetime value of a client?

• What is your net profit per client?

With these figures you’ll have set a specific goal, and more importantly, you’ll be able to figure out exactly what you’ll need to do to reach it.

For example: If your goal is to make $25,000 per month profit, and your average sale is $1,500 (with $500 net profit), you’ll need 50 sales per month. That’s about 2.5 sales per day.

I counsel the small business owners I work with take it a step further: To take that goal and then put effective business and marketing systems in place to achieve it. Knowing the numbers will allow you to calculate exactly how much it will cost to get a new client. Obviously, getting new clients is more expensive than getting current and past ones to do business with you again – some studies say up to five times as expensive, in fact.

But I’m sure you know that. So if you’re smart, you’ll also work at getting current and past clients to do business with you more and more often. You do that by using marketing strategies that are specifically designed to get your clients to spend more money with you.

For example, you’ll want to increase the value of your offers to them. Then, you’ll need to use marketing tactics where every dollar you invest can be directly tracked to the results it creates (that’s called “Direct Response Marketing”).

Because it’s the results that matter! Once you determine the cost of each ad, each mailing and every click to your website, then you’ll know in advance how long it will take and how much it will cost you to reach any goal.

So here’s what you need to do… Set a specific goal for yourself, with a definite deadline. Then make sure to keep that goal in mind at all times. That way, you’ll be able to focus your time and energy on using the right marketing tactics to reach your goal.

Here’s a simple five-step system to achieving success in any business:

1. Figure out the key numbers of your business

2. Set a specific goal

3. Create a plan to reach your goal, with specific actions

4. Take the actions outlined in your plan

5. Track your results

When you start doing this over and over, you’ll find yourself reaching more and higher goals, putting more money in your bank account and having more peace of mind in your life — because you’ll know that you have a system that works.

Then, it’s just a matter of figuring out what specific actions to take to reach your desired goals. And that’s where the fun really begins – the possibilities are endless once you become a student and practitioner of Direct Response Marketing!

Do you have a Marketing Plan for your business? Do you know your numbers? Are you a student and practitioner of Direct Response Marketing?

Leave me a comment below.

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