Build Your Marketing Muscle All Year Long

Looking to learn how to create a yearly marketing plan?

Sometimes, business owners get focused on marketing over the holidays and are refreshed heading into the new year. This article provides some insights to help you take a step back and think about the whole year ahead.

No, this is not another post about creating resolutions or checking up on how yours are progressing. This is, however, an article about why consistency in your marketing is important, just like weight loss and exercise.

We see this a lot with businesses of all sizes: The person who does some of the marketing, which in small businesses could be an owner or one of the upper level folks, gets inspired and is on fire with posting on social media, website updates and blogs. They might create 2 or 3 blogs in a week or a month. OR they post lots of great articles and posts on Facebook over 1 or 2 days.

Then…. After a few days, or weeks, sometimes months – nothing. They are now focusing on more day to day tasks, putting out fires and things like that – than they are working on marketing.

You Can’t Do It All in One Day

Those with good intentions on fitness or weight loss hit their workouts hard when they finally make it to the gym once or maybe twice a week. They work out so hard that they may not be able to move the next day, so they stay home for days at a time.

When it comes to marketing, it isn’t something that can all be done in one day a week or a couple days a month. You need to pace yourself and know that progress comes from a little something for many days, consistently, over time.

Create Your (Marketing) Routine

Some people workout insanely early, some middle of the day and others after work or into the evening. While I’ve heard some fitness experts say that working out in the morning can be better for faster weight loss, the majority say that the best time to workout is when you are able to work out.

Apply that to your marketing. If you take an hour or two a week to plan, schedule and work on marketing, you’re starting a marketing routine. It could be Monday mornings, or it could be Friday’s at lunch time – but make time for your marketing routine to:

• Review social media channels
• Draft a blog article for the website
• Connect with other industry influencers or share articles relevant to your target audience

You Have to Like (Or At Least Tolerate) It

If you don’t like it, you won’t do it… or you’ll at least blow it off as long as possible and half-heartedly do it later. This is why finding a plan that you can tolerate is very important. You know some level of activity or exercise is good for you, as is some level of marketing consistency.

In terms of marketing, outline different aspects of marketing you like or tolerate best, and then delegate.

• Not fan of social media? That’s okay – find someone comfortable with social channels who can do it. As long as you share in the strategy creation (your plan and content ideation) others can execute in the different channels.
• Don’t like to write but have lots of ideas? Find a contract writer you can meet with once a month. Chat for an hour about industry trends, things that might make your customer’s lives easier, things like that. Have the write create a couple pieces from that conversation you can use as a blog article or an email to customers.

Don’t you wish you could have others work out for you?

Preparation Goes a Long Way (Especially with Content)

If you were online at all over the first few weeks of this New Year, you probably saw lots of information about food prep. It highlights how important planning things out in appropriate portions make it easier to stick to your diet and routine.

Your marketing efforts can be the same way. You can prep for your monthly marketing work by breaking it out in to smaller tasks. A few samples are below. But we recommend, that if you spend at least 1 to maybe 2 hours on marketing per week, CONSISTENTLY, then you are likely going to be doing more than others, and see the results.

• 1 hour, 1 day a week to research articles and information you can share with your fans/followers. Copy them down, write your take-aways and relevant points you’d make when sharing this with your prospects or customers.
• 1 hour later that week, you can go schedule those posts in your social channels.
• Take 2 hours 1 day a week to draft a blog or article that addresses a frequently asked question or a pain point of your customers. Heck you might be so inspired that you write two or more articles!

How to Create a Yearly Marketing Plan

There you have it. Now go build those marketing muscles so you can flex them in just a few short months. We look forward to hearing about your results. And, if you have any questions, just let us know.