Time for change?

I want you to take 30 minutes, or how about a full hour in the next week to cast your mind back over 2011 and what you achieved for your business and where you fell short of your expectations.

• Did you grow your customer base last year and if so how?
• Did you increase your sales last year and if so by how much?
• Did you improve your products or services? What prompted this?
• Did your sales fall? Why was this? Did you take your foot off the pedal, were market conditions against you or did you do well to generate the sales that you did achieve?
• Did you put marketing at the heart of your business or did you stay in your marketing comfort zone?
• How much did you spend on marketing and how much of this spend actually delivered?
• If you had to summarise your business performance in a few sentences what would you say?

It’s a good idea to look back at what you’ve achieved with your business and how you achieved it before steaming ahead into the next year with your to-do list. This is your marketing audit, an opportunity for you to weed out those marketing activities and tactics that did not serve you well and to refocus on generating sales with the right customers. With your marketing audit under your belt, it’s then time to look forwards, to establish your marketing plan for 2012. But nothing is set in stone. Your marketing plans can change and change dramatically as new unanticipated opportunities unfold.

If you can address the following you’re off to a good start.

1. Assuming I want to retain my existing customers, how will I build on their loyalty this year so they want to stay with me?
2. If I am planning on growing my customer base this year, who am I going to communicate with and why? Where will I find them and what are the initial messages and the products and services that will captivate them sufficiently to build a dialogue?
3. If I am going to continue with my present offering, do I need to improve it? Would a little competitor research kick start my improvement programme? Should I be talking to existing customers and finding out what else I can deliver?
4. What marketing opportunities am I currently shrinking away from or unaware of? How can I become more marketing savvy?

I wish you much success and happiness in 2012.

PS: By the way if you want to grow your business dramatically this year through powerful sales letters, adverts, newsletters and web copy, there are just 2 places left on my copywriting boot camp. You can find out more by following this link: BootCamp