Right after Labor Day, I started to work on my 2009 marketing plan for my business and while plans are still underway, I thought I'd offer you a few quick tips to enhance or kickoff your own planning.
In fact, today is a great day because the traditional Thanksgiving Day leftover meal is a perfect marketing metaphor.
I'm sure many of you cooked some good and not so good turkeys this year, but isn't it amazing how many tasty things you can create the day after Thanksgiving (without the stress) like soups, sandwiches etc.!
Likewise, you can quickly lay a great foundation to your new marketing plan by carefully assessing the Turkeys you cooked in the past and asking yourself some easy questions such as:
- Which marketing efforts were beautiful Turkeys (homeruns)? What can we add/subtract to improve?
- What Turkeys were not cooked (or overcooked) enough and how could we improve them?
- Should we simply save time, money and aggravation and eat out next year (outsource)?
- Should we only serve white meat (reduce market/product offerings)?
- Should we serve turkey more frequently – not just on Thanksgiving (repeat campaigns, sales)?
- Should we only invite close loved ones to our celebration (fire annoying customers)?
- How can we make our preparations less time consuming and less stressful (critical path method)?
Simply put, ask yourself these kinds of questions and start your planning process now and turn more of your work days into memorable holidays!
