We hope you’ve had a wonderful summer and are now ready to prepare for 2012. A couple of weeks ago we published a post that referred to brand planning as a big brand tactic you can use for your SME business. This week we expand upon that tactic.
What worked well from your marketing plan this year? What didn’t yield much of a return on investment? How much has your participation in social media added to your bottom line?
These are all questions that should be considered when you ‘brand plan’ for your small business. The end product of your brand planning will be your marketing plan for 2012 – refined and enhanced with the lessons learned from 2011. Below are 7 reasons why you should be brand planning now.
1. Your competitors are already planning their activity for 2012.
2. To be original and different takes more time than to re-hash what you’ve done before.
3. Better planning leads to more effective marketing.
4. The economy is not getting easier for SMEs – it will still be a challenging environment.
5. If you remain too operational rather than working along strategic lines it will be very difficult to make an impact in your sector.
6. Your transactional data, lead generation and conversion rates will give you a great steer as to what has been truly effective for your business specifically – allow yourself enough time to capitalise on this data.
7. For some marketing activities there are quite long lead-times and it pays to plan ahead book the best slots for your business – exhibition space at your industry’s key event, for example.
We would be happy to help you with your brand planning process and to work with you to draft a marketing plan for 2012 so give us a call on 0845 2264247 or drop us an email via mail@marketingfundamentals.org.uk
We hope you find this information useful.
Kind regards,
Marketing Fundamentals Team
Follow us on Social Media
