So you've learnt lots about Marketing techniques in the last few modules. You now know that for your marketing to be effective, you need to
Know who you are marketing to
Know what you are selling to them
Move them through your funnel so that they have all the information that they need, and have got to the point where they know all about you and your business
Catch them again at the point when they are ready to buy
Ensure that you reply to their queries in a timely fashion which builds trust.
To put all of those things together, today you're going to make a marketing campaign for each of the Customers you are going to sell to.
You are going to plan the (at least) 7 points of contact that they are going to have with you, and the timing that those are going to take place over. Most successful campaigns are usually conducted over a space of 3 weeks to 3 months.
You are going to use the Questions you are asked on a regular basis to fill your marketing literature, and you are going to make sure that you write about what's in it for them, not why they should use you.
A marketing plan is useless if you write it and then don't both action it, and come back to it and review it. Today you are also going to make SMART targets and put dates in your diary to both complete your action plans and review how they are working.
SMART targets are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timebased
Do more facebook advertising, - isn't a SMART target
Connect with local customers in my village, Via facebook, on at least 6 occasions during March and April, so that they know that i do Flower arranger bucket subscriptions, and can deliver them locally between April and September, with the aim of getting 4 more customers - Is a SMART target
This is where having a Social media planner can come in handy, - here’s an example for you, and a blank sheet for you to download
Here's my plan from 2015 which I carefully wrote out at the front of a smart new notebook (notice the doodles on the spine, that's what i do when i'm on the phone!).
The items on it were good, but they weren't smart targets, and they weren't dated, which was why more than half of them didn't get done. In 2016 I made a similar but more detailed list, I carried through all my plan to contact florists, and saw an 80% rise in sales. I managed half my plan for brides, and got double the number of weddings from the year before. I didn't get round to doing anything for locals except donating some flowers to a couple of events I wasn't able to go to. Unsurprisingly my sales of bouquets stayed static. Although generally my sales doubled the year before.
In, 2017 I was busy writing my book between December and March, I didn't really plan my marketing in the way i'd done before, I did do a series of emails to my florists and a couple of early open days. My florist sales rose dramatically last year, and started a lot earlier than the year before. However, the lack of plan for my brides and locals and workshops showed... By June I was behind the year before, and it was only a couple of big orders at the end of the summer that really saved my wedding sales in 2017. For 2018 I started my plan early, in October. I held several late bridal open days and got lots of Weddings planned in to early spring. My season started amazingly, but almost too well as I didn't have enough flowers for my florists, so I held off marketing to them. The beast from the east and then record scorching temperatures meant that I had less flowers than for the 2 years before, so I changed my marketing to be aimed at local customers. I updated my website so that it was a webshop, and immediately (and continually since then) I've had regular bouquet orders. During the summer I marketed my Friday flowers, and flower arranger subscriptions, and had a four fold increase in them, so that although My florist sales went down by 50%, my sales of flowers overall went up, and my profit increased
So Now's the time for you to learn from my mistakes, - make yourself a full plan for this year. Work out when you are going to do all the items on it, schedule them into your diary, book in additional help if you need it find professionals to do copywriting, printing, photography or website work if you need it.
If you’re going to do a one to one with me, Send me a copy - so I can talk you though it, and give you the confidence to get it done.