Plan your work, work your plan.

Having a professionally prepared marketing plan can help you to stop wasting money on promotions that don't work and start getting pro-active about where you really want to be in the market.

An effective marketing plan will:

• Be aligned to your vision (and if you haven't articulated this yet, help you to get it right)
• Be aligned to your business objectives (and if you haven't set these yet, help you to gain clarity)
• Address the 4 Ps of marketing (product/service, price, position and promotion)
• Assist you get clear about what market you are in and what markets you may move to next
• Help you get clear about what position you are in the market, and if this needs to change, a plan on how to change it
• Help you get clear about your target market
• Align your team, so you are all rowing in the same direction
• Be reviewable and updatable

A great marketing plan will not:

• Focus only on advertising and promotion
• Promise your business to be all things to all people

Once you have a plan, whether you have engaged a professional marketing consultant to facilitate the process, or have prepared one yourself, you need to get the tasks into action. The most powerful and important part of the planning process, (in my humble opinion) is moving from planning phase into implementation phase. 

A very clever plan that remains on paper on a shelf, un-actioned will only ever be expensive pieces of paper.

A plan that is actioned (even if it is a simpler, more basic plan) will win every time!

Happy planning and happy implementation!

#gsd 

​That's hashtag get stuff done.