Archive for Goal setting
Creating a Marketing Plan
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s a new year, and rather than making some resolutions that I know I’ll never keep, I started my new year with a very focused marketing plan. I know that if you don’t have a plan, a road map, on how to get somewhere, you’re probably not going to reach your goal. So here’s some steps you can take to create your own marketing plan.
Step 1 – Review the plan you had for the prior year.
If you didn’t have a plan last year, then analyze any marketing you’ve done in the past and how well it worked for you.
Ask yourself these questions:
- How did my clients find me in 2009?
- What websites/social networking/other places did they come from?
- What did I do in order to be seen by those clients?
- What marketing worked and didn’t work – and why?
- How can I apply those techniques that worked last year to get more clients in 2010?
- What can I change about what didn’t work to make it better?
Step 2 – After analyzing last year’s plan, write down this year’s marketing plan.
By writing down your plan, you make it more real and it turns into your goals and your actions instead of just abstract, unclear thoughts.
At minimum, answer these 5 questions in your marketing plan:
- Who’s your target market?
- What are your products and/or services?
- Why does your target market need your product/services?
- What kind of problems do you help your target market solve?
- What makes you special or why should our market do business with you and not your competitors?
- What marketing techniques are you going to put into place to reach out to your target market?
Also, think about your business vision, goals and objectives. Make your goals quantifiable and realistic. But don’t make them too easy, because you want to have to stretch to achieve them.
Create your plan by month. Then create weekly and daily to-do lists based on your overall marketing plan and goals.
Now go get started on your plan. And if you want some help getting some ideas on where you can market your business online, you can always sign up for one of my free strategy sessions.
Have a great day!
Plan Your Success Contest
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What You’ll Win:
An hour long one-on-one Plan Your Success session with me, Crystal Parrett. In this session, we’ll take the time to drill down to exactly what your top 3 goals are for your social marketing efforts. Once we’ve determined your goals, I will provide personalized strategies for setting up your daily/weekly/monthly action plan and some time-saving tips that will help you spend less time while increasing your results. After our strategy session, you will receive a detailed, written marketing plan to refer back to as often as you need.
How To Win:
Post a short comment after this post about your biggest challenge when it comes to your social/online marketing efforts. Once you’ve added your comment, please let me know by posting on Twitter to @crystalparrett and using #plansuccess . Also post a link to this page. Or you can email me at plan@timesaversvirtualsolutions.com letting me know you made a comment.
Contest Rules:
3 winners will be chosen at random on December 29, 2009. You’ll be contacted by me to schedule your session, so you can start out your new year with a marketing plan all ready to go.
Good luck!!
Planning Your 2010 Social Media Marketing
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As I was decorating our tree with the kids last week, I realized that before I knew it 2010 was going to be here. My kids really get into Christmas, well not really Christmas, but more of the presents that come with Christmas. They start their list around Halloween time, and are constantly revising it, updating it, making changes to it, checking with us to see if they might get any of it.
As I sat there thinking about 2010 just around the corner, I started thinking that maybe as much time and dedication my kids devote to their Christmas gifts, I should spend on my marketing plan/goals for 2010. Just like they start preparing way before Christmas, maybe I should plan ahead instead of just hoping and praying that things happen the way I want them to. So I sat down last week and planned out my 2010 Social Media Action Plan.
When I finished it, I liked it so much, I made up one for some of my current clients. I’m waiting for their feedback, but I have decided that this is a great bonus for my clients to be able to work with me on a focused, strategized, detailed plan to help them meet their goals and stay on track without getting distracted – which we all know can happen so easily when you’re in business for yourself.
So here’s a few highlights of my plan, that maybe you can take and use to strategize your own 2010 Plan.
- Figure out who your ideal client/target market is, so you know where to focus your efforts
- Get very clear on what you’re hoping to get from your social/online marketing efforts and set some detailed, quantitative goals
- Do an assessment on where you currently are – website traffic, conversion rates, where traffic is coming from, level of activity on which sites, current search engine results
- Now that you have your starting point and your ending point (goals), set up a detailed daily/weekly/monthly plan for what you’re going to do to market yourself using social networking
- Every 30 days, do another assessment to make sure you’re on track to meet your goals and to adjust anything that’s not working
Hopefully, this will at least get you inspired to plan your 2010 Social Media Plan. If you want any ideas, or need any help about some action steps you can take to increase your business, feel free to comment with any questions you have.
Also, remember that I offer a free 30 minute Strategy Call if you want some help setting up your own Social Media Action Plan.
Have a great day!
Using Google Analytics to Monitor Website Traffic
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When you’re using social media to direct people to your website, of course you want to track your results. If you don’t monitor the results of your marketing, you won’t know if it’s working or if you need to change something you’re doing to get better results.
By yourself, or working together with your virtual assistant, you can set up a system to monitor your visitors and their activity once they get to your site. Everyone should watch their website statistics on a weekly or monthly basis to monitor trends and look for improvements.
Here is a plan of action you can follow using some free Google tools:
Step 1 – Google Analytics
- Set up an account for yourself at Google.com.
- Access Google Analytics and add your main website and blog url’s to the reports area.
- Add the Google Analytics code to your website and blog, which will allow Google to start accumulating stats for your sites.
Step 2 – Set up your tracking sheet. (Use Google Documents if you’re working with an assistant.)
- Start a Google spreadsheet to share the data between you and your assistant.
- Set up statistics to track on a monthly basis:
- Absolute Unique Visitors – how many first time visits to the site
- Return Visits – of those first time visits, how many returned
- Average Time Spent on Site – what is the average time viewers spent on the site
- Bounce Rate – the percentage of single-page visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page
- Country – if you’re growing your business internationally you’ll want to monitor your visitors’ country of origin
- City – this lets you dig a little deeper to uncover what city produces the most visitors
3. Add a 2nd tab to the document titled Traffic Sources to collect info about:
- Traffic Sources – What are the top 10 – 15 sites that directed traffic to your website
- Unique Visitors – how many unique visitors came from these traffic sources
4. Add a 3rd tab called Keywords.
- Keyword Research – How many visits resulted based on specific key word searches
5. Set up 2 or 3 goals to judge conversion rates. (See examples below)
- Goal 1: How many visitors signed up for the free report?
- Goal 2: How many visitors purchased a product?
Collecting this information on a monthly basis will help you make more solid decisions on your marketing plans. For example, you may need to add more defined keywords in your blog posts, or you may want to focus on a particular state/region if you’ve had a large number of searches from that area.
You or your assistant should monitor and report on the stats on a monthly basis. This will allow you to adjust your marketing efforts based on the traffic and activity you are seeing on your website.
Whether you use Google or some other form of analytics system, make sure you are not just using it but also analyzing the data to make sure your marketing efforts are producing the results you need them to.
Four Great Ways to Keep Your Business on Track
Posted by: | CommentsSolo professionals need a strong vision of where they’re headed and an internal warning system that tells them when they are getting off their game. Here are four ways to make sure you are keeping on track.
1. Take a look at your to-do list. Put a star by anything that has been on that list for more than two weeks, and look at those starred items with an eagle eye. Chances are, you are procrastinating on those items. Take the starred items and list them out on a separate sheet of paper, and out beside each one note what the very next step is to move that item forward. Now, either schedule it in your calendar for THIS week, or hand it off to an assistant. Often, entrepreneurs procrastinate because they are unsure how to proceed. If that’s the issue, call a friend, talk to your Mastermind group, put it on your coaching agenda – take an action that will get you out of “not knowing how.”
If you get into the habit of regularly scanning your to-do list and noticing what hangs on there for several weeks or more, you’ll develop the strong habit of pushing yourself out of procrastination.
2. Get yourself a timer. As you sit down to work on the task at hand, set the timer for half an hour and pledge to work ONLY on that task, with no interruptions. I often tell my clients that the world actually can live without them for 30 minutes at a time! Don’t check e-mail, answer the phone, Tweet about what you are doing. Stay right on task until the timer goes off. Using a timer to create concentrated periods of work teaches you focus. Entrepreneurs are well-known for having “bright shiny object syndrome” (also called fuzzy focus.) The more you train yourself to focus for short bursts of time, the more productive you will be.
3. Remind yourself of your big vision at least once a day, and tell someone else at least once a week. It’s easy to get discouraged when obstacles get in the way, and discouragement can lead to self-doubt. Regularly reminding yourself that you are doing your business for an important reason, and that you have every capability to succeed is critical. And about once a week, it’s good to hear that from someone else who is a supporter. Creating the habit of keeping your vision in the top of your mind fosters a strong faith in yourself and what you’re doing. It drives self-doubt out the door.
4. Get yourself into a Mastermind group, meet regularly, and don’t skip. You didn’t decide to be in business for yourself to play small, did you? Developing a strong relationship with other solo business owners who can encourage and support you creates a habit of thinking big. And that’s what you want to be doing, thinking big, thinking out of the box, thinking in ways that most people don’t think. A good Mastermind group will both encourage and challenge you to get out of your comfort zone, keeping you from thinking too small about yourself and your business. It’s a safe place to test out your most outrageous business ideas and get help in shaping those into reality. Develop the habit of thinking big and out of the box! It will help ensure that your business flourishes.
Using these four systems fosters four good habits that keep you right on track. And in the end, those habits lead directly to a better bottom line.
(c) Sue Painter
Sue Painter works with solo professionals who need to revisit what they are doing in business, how to make more money, and figure out what is blocking their success. She collaborated with Amy Franko to create Four Ways to Flourish for Solopreneurs, at http://fourwaystoflourish.com.
Getting clarity about your goals and objectives.
Posted by: | Comments“There is one quality that one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to achieve it. “ Napoleon Hill
Here is the first of the 21 ways to stop procrastinating and getting more done. You need to have clear, written goals. The number one reason some people get more done faster is because they are absolutely clear about their goals and objectives, and they don’t deviate from them. If you’re goals are vague, unfocused, fuzzy, unclear – you’re probably going to procrastinate and have a lack of motivation, because you aren’t sure what you’re doing all of that work for.
Here is a formula used in the book “Eat That Frog!” – to set and achieve goals that you can reuse for the rest of your life. It consists of 7 easy steps:
Step 1 – Decide exactly what you want. If you work for yourself, get very clear on what you’re hoping to achieve, and in what order of priority. If you have a boss, sit down with him or her, and discuss your goals and objectives together to do the same thing. “One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all.”
Step 2 – Write it down. Do this on paper. When you write down a goal, it becomes tangible. Something you can see. Unwritten goals lead to confusion, uncertainty, mistakes, lack of direction.
Step 3 – Set a deadline on your goal; set subdeadlines if necessary. Without a deadline, a goal doesn’t have any urgency. Most people will procrastinate and get little done without a defined ending.
Step 4 – Make a list of everything that you can think of that you are going to have to do to achieve your goal. Everytime you think of new tasks, add them to your list, until your list is complete. This gives you a visual picture of the whole objective or task, and increases the chances you’ll achieve the goal on schedule.
Step 5 – Organize the list into a plan. Organize it by sequence and by priority. Figure out the order your tasks need to be or should be done in. By writing down your goal and than organizing your tasks, you’ll be much more productive than someone who carries their goals around in their head.
Step 6 – Take action on your plan immediately. Do something. Do anything. Just make movement towards your end goal. If you want to achieve any kind of success, you have to execute. “An average plan vigorously executed is far better than a brilliant plan on which nothing is done.”
Step 7 – Resolve to do something every single day that moves you toward your major goal. Build this into your daily schedule. Whatever it is that you do, don’t miss a day. Keep moving forward, and once you start, don’t stop.
So write down your goals, get very clear on them, and take action consistently. Review your goals daily.
Here’s what Brian Tracy has to say about goals: “Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement. The bigger your goals and the clearer they are, the more excited you become about achieving them. The more you think about your goals, the greater become your inner drive and desire to accomplish them.”
Have a great day!
