Maria Piscopo's Business Library Tips

Visit Maria online at www.mpiscopo.com for all the latest business tips, seminars and workshops

Marketing & Business Update
Marketing For A New Year
By Maria Piscopo

Your marketing plan for 1999 will be your map to get from where you are now to where you want to be. Before we look at writing the plan, there are three important points to remember as you look towards the turn of the century.

One, your written plan is like a map to reach an unknown destination. Without this map, you are lost and most likely unwilling to stop and ask for directions. This map is your day-to-day strategy to get the work you want.

Two, getting from here to there is faster and more efficient if you know the destination. You must first identify the new business or clientele you want to develop.

Three, a written plan will relieve the daily pressure of scrambling to find new business. It already includes specific action items added to your daily calendar. Instead of trying to remember your self-promotion, use your valuable creative energy for the work, not for getting the work!

Once you have decided on your direction and the work you want to go after, then write your strategic plan. The plan is an overall self-promotion strategy. It can include all four areas: personal selling, direct marketing, advertising and public relations. These key ingredients all work together, as a recipe for your personal success and you'll find that the lack of success will be do to the weakness (or lack of planning) in any one of these areas.

Any or all can include electronic or online options as long as you have traditional presentations available for those clients that need them. For example, a Web site does not replace a portfolio that a client can hold or view on a lightbox. It adds to it. A portfolio on a CD-ROM does not replace a Sourcebook ad. It adds to it.

For the achievement of your marketing plan, cross-reference all tasks and activities to your daily calendar. This will make sure self-promotion is a daily routine and not something to do when there's nothing else to do. This scheduling is the key to a balancing act to manage both your business and creative!

Your written Marketing Plan should include these details,

• Timing - how often will you contact new clients? Schedule everything that can be planned ahead. When paying jobs come along, you can always reschedule any action item, such as writing a press release. If that press release had not been on the calendar, it would have been long forgotten.
  
• Content - consistency of your marketing message is very important. Prospective clients need to hang you on a hook so they can come back and find you when they have a job.
  
• Marketing Mix - decide the combination of the number of mailings, design your Web site and create new portfolios. Also, determine the value of advertising and the importance of publicity. Decide who will make the sales calls. All actions should be spelled out in the plan in advance.
  
• Budget - for the overall marketing budget, plan on spending an average of 10% of projected gross sales for all the materials you'll use for self-promotion.
  
• Bite size Tasks-if the item of action is too big or overwhelming, you'll put it off and it probably won't get done. Break each action down into the smallest, most "bite-size" tasks that you can.
  
• Match the Activity to the Goal-be sure that each action in the final plan has a clear and reasonable objective. For example, advertising won't sell your work. It does bring you the leads to add to your selling database. Publicity won't make your phone ring. It will influence them when they get your mailing or see your Web site.

Use these tools for the goals they are meant to attain for you!