Jun
1
2010
Having clear online marketing objectives
Author: Inside Stuart's head...Nothing is more suicidal for a business than not have clear objectives and not having the plans in place to support you through your business journey. My good friend and trusted mentor, Arlin Sorensen who guided me through my years as an IT Professionals talks about the importance of planning every day. His basic four plans for business success is something I attempt to live by (doing an OK job with some).
I still run into many small businesses in Calgary with no business plan. They have no clear objectives, they don’t know if they are on track and the worst thing is that they all have employees running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Simply because the leadership team has no clear objectives, no destination in mind and no idea how they are going to get there. Besides loosing tonnes of cash spinning their wheels they also run the risk of losing their talented staff.
Is this your business?
Is your approach to business this, let’s just shoot everything up against a wall and let’s see what sticks? What falls to the ground we will dismiss and what sticks, “heck, let’s go for it”. I would like to advice you, that approach may not be the best for you and your team.
Why do you come into the office each day?
Since my focus now in business is around your entire strategy when it comes to marketing your business online, I am going to practice what I preach and focus in on what I know. However, I am also a small business owner and have been in organizations that didn’t have a business plan and people on the team were the “blind leading the blind”. It is very frustrating.
Your online marketing must have clear objectives and be measurable. Tweeting for the sake of tweeting may win you a tonne of followers on Twitter, but tweeting which is aligned to your business objectives may win you new business opportunities. Do you see what I am getting at? What is your blogging strategy, who does what and on what topics? How do you know what you are doing is working? Lots of questions to ask here.
Based on what Arlin has taught me throughout the years, I came up with four mandatory plans for online marketing success.
- Your Business Plan – This is a must (fail to plan, plan to fail)
- Your Marketing Plan – This is where you set all your marketing goals and where all marketing rolls up
- Online Marketing Strategic Plan – What are the goals of your online marketing in relation to your entire marketing and business plan
- Online Marketing Execution Plan – Who is responsible for what, what gets done and what needs to happen.
You can even break it down deeper that every aspect of your execution plan has a strategy and execution plan attached. The message here is that you have to plan. You must start with the end in mind and work back. You need to constantly tweak based on your objectives and you can’t do that unless you measure what you are doing and taking ownership of your entire business strategy.
This is where our team at Ulistic comes in. Enter, shameless self promotional piece…if your business simply needs some guidance on social media, online marketing, search engine optimization or any other marketing type of query answered…pick up the phone and call me at 403.775.2205 Option 2.
