Your most powerful marketing tool is your business plan (2)

If the idea of creating a business plan makes your eyes glaze over, don't worry. This chapter isn't about the kind of detailed business plan you'd need to get a loan from a
bank or money from a venture capitalist. In fact, the kind of business plan I'm going to show you just might be the most dynamic document you've ever created, and it is likely to be
the most profitable.
First things first. If you've already written a business plan, print it out or dust it off and take a look at it. If it's more than
two years old, its shelf life has expired. Why? The global economic changes in 2008 and 2009 require a whole new
way of looking at the business world. Assumptions made
based on market conditions prior to 2009 just aren't a clear picture of the real world anymore. So be prepared to make
some changes.
If you've never written a business plan, you're about to find
out how to make it your most powerful marketing tool. Pull out a pad of paper and a pen, and let's get started.
Define Success in Your Own Terms
Start off by defining what you mean by "success" for the
next 12 months. There is no one definition for success. Success can mean different things to different people. Your definition should be what will satisfy you, and it's likely to
evolve over time. But unless you know what your success
target is for the immediate future, you won't know when
you've hit it.
Here are some ways to define business success for any given year:
- Profit.
- Market share.
- New product penetration.
- Media coverage and endorsements.
National distribution channels.
Percent gain in product sales.
Industry credibility-speaking engagements, interviews, board or committee roles.
You may even think of a few more possibilities. The point is
that success is more than just money, although for most
companies and solo professionals, there is a target amount of money involved.
Ready, Aim...
Now write down your top three business goals for next year. Be sure to prioritize them from most important to least
important. Do they match your definition of success?
One of the reasons marketing often fails for small businesses and solo professionals is that the marketing is not aligned with the prioritized business plan goals. Overwhelmed business owners take whatever marketing
opportunities cross their paths, or buy into "deals" offered
to them by persuasive media salespeople. They don't know
how to say yes with confidence and no without guilt because they don't have any standard to judge the
opportunities.
Your business plan sets that standard. Next to each of your prioritized business goals, Iwant you to write down who the
target audience is for that goal. The more precisely you can
narrow down the target audience (for example, instead of
"everyone," it would be better to say "college-educated men between the ages of 18 and 30"), the more precisely
you'll be able to target your marketing. You may have more
than one target audience for each goal (for now), or you may have the same target audience for all of your goals. That's okay. We'll look at your audiences in more detail in
the next chapter.
...Fire! Or Aim Again
Once you've matched an audience with a prioritized goal, make a list of all your current marketing efforts. List everything: Website, direct mail, print or radio ads,
signage, social media, e-mail newsletters, speaking
appearances, press releases, etc. Now that you've made a
comprehensive list, match each marketing effort to the
target audience it reaches, and to the business goal it
supports. Do you see any disconnects?
Usually at this point, business owners notice that they have marketing efforts that reach a particular target audience but
that they aren't communicating a message that supports the
business goal that is now linked to that audience. For example, perhaps paid magazine ads are reaching the
right type of reader, but the call to action isn't aligned with
the top business goal, so if the goal is "increase the mailing
list with opt-ins," the ad should encourage readers to go to
the Website and sign up with their e-mail address to
receive something.
Or business owners discover "orphan" marketing efforts
that don't seem to connect with any prioritized business goal. Orphan marketing efforts might exist out of habit, or because they met an old need, or because there's an
emotional connection to the action or to the person who
sold it to you. But if it's not advancing a business goal, it's an orphan because there is no reason to keep doing it. They might also find marketing that is communicating the
right message for a goal, but to the wrong audience. Getting the message in sync with the best target audience
in support of the right prioritized goal is the first step to marketing success. And though this book focuses on social media marketing, that's just one of many tools to help your
company promote itself. Social media marketing will be most successful if it's linked to the right goal and audience, and you'll get a multiplier effect on all of your marketing
efforts if they are all in sync. As you'll see when we get into
the details of social media marketing, good social media
helps to send prospects to your Website, shares your press
releases, or distributes your podcasts or blog posts. If
those marketing actions aren't tied to the right goals and
audiences, you can have a brilliant social media strategy but your prospect will get a muddled, ineffective message
that will cost you sales.
Look for Gaps
Now that you've aligned your business plan goals according to your success priorities, matched the goals to
the right target audiences, and matched your current marketing efforts to the right audience and goal, it's time to
go "gap hunting"
Here's how to gap hunt:
Are there any goals/audiences without even one marketing
effort?
- Are all the marketing efforts bunched up around one goal?
Does most of your marketing effort support your top
prioritized goal?
- Is most of your effort being put into goals you've ranked as
second or third in importance?
Do you have target audiences who aren't the focus of any marketing?
Is one target audience getting all the marketing messages?
Are second- or third-goal audiences getting more marketing messages than your top-goal audience?
Make a list of these marketing gaps, because you'll need to
address them across your marketing, and you'll want to
look for ways social media can help you plug the holes.
Defining Your Transformative Value
Before any customer spends money, he or she has to overcome two obstacles: ego and money. Ego is what makes people try to fix a problem themselves with what
they have, rather than hire someone to do it. They don't agree to buy a service or product until they fail at fixing the
problem themselves. Money is what clients hope to save by doing the job themselves. Most people won't hire someone
for any job until 1) they have failed to do it themselves, and
2) there is enough at stake that continued failure will cost more than paying for the job.
Every person who buys your product or service does so
because he or she has a problem. For example, if you are
a business coach who specializes in work/life balance, your
clients set aside time and money to work with you because
they are currently out of balance. If you run a roofing firm,
clients hire you to replace missing shingles. "Balance" or
"missing shingles" is the problem.
Behind the problem is a pain. That's the chance that the
problem could get bigger. The work/life balance problem
could begin to impact a person's relationships or the ability
to complete projects. A few missing shingles could lead to water damage and more expensive repairs if not fixed
promptly.
Underneath the pain is a fear. The fear is the "what if" that
keeps a prospect up at night envisioning the worst
scenario. The work/life balance issue could lead to a
divorce, delinquent children, or bankruptcy. Water damage
could mean a whole new roof and expensive structural damage.
Your Transformative Value is the way you speak to the
problem/ pain/fear in your own unique way. When you make
a sale, it's because you have done two things: successfully answered the ego/ money challenge and satisfied the
problem/pain/fear issue. To satisfy the ego/money
challenge, you've convinced the prospect that you have
skills they don't, you will save them money, and they'll have
better results. You've resolved the problem/pain/fear issue
by assuring them that you can fix the initial problem so well
that the pain and fear disappear.
Successful marketing communicates your unique Transformative Value to your best prospects to satisfy both
the ego/money objection and to solve the
problem/pain/fear. Social media is one of the many marketing channels you can use to communicate that message effectively.