To fail to plan is to plan to fail.
Hackneyed maybe, but definitely true!
I gave a seminar to an audience of SME business owners. Taking a bit of a flyer, I asked for a show of hands. “Do you have a live marketing plan that you actively use?“Â Not a single hand was raised!
Over the next few weeks we are planning a series of blog posts to help address this situation. By following the ideas outlined in this series, you can develop and implement a sustainable marketing process within a modest and realistic budget.
We marketers love our acronyms and we really couldn’t launch a programme such as this without our own so we have PIMMS.
PIMMS is a model developed by BSA that takes you through the process of creating and implementing a marketing plan for your business.
You may find this PIMMS proforma document useful. We will be looking at 1 stage at a time but feel free to look ahead, I’m sure you will anyway!
The steps of the process are:
- P – PLANNING
1: Your Objectives – What do you want to achieve?
2: Your Proposition – What is so good about your business?
3: Your Target Market – Who do you want to sell to? - I – IMPLEMENTATION
1: Get your message visible
2: Don’t wait for people to find you – go out and tell them - M – Monitor
Use web tools to check what sort of impact you are having - M – Manage
Use market feedback to improve your marketing - S – Sustain
Stick at it. The best results come from INTELLIGENT PERSISTENCE
We are happy to help you if you wish but the entire process can be completed using common sense, internal resources & free tools available on the Internet.
If you would like to follow this series, then why not follow us on Twitter or sign up for our newsletter, and we will make sure we tell you when new posts in the series are added.
To get the ball rolling we are looking at the first step – Your Objectives – next time!