A Goal Without A Plan Is Just A Wish

4 Benefits of Planning Your Marketing Strategy Ahead of Time

I have to say, I’m typically the person thinking in terms of today, tomorrow, and maybe the rest of the week. I schedule things out at most 1 week in advance. Whereas this can lead to spontaneity and allows for flexibility and responsiveness, it can also cause stress and lead to me forgetting an obligation or two.

Particularly in the marketing world, I have found I often get better results with a focused plan. Planning has many benefits that ultimately lead to better results for your company. To name just a few:

• Provides the Big Picture View – I love those photo mosaics that have small pictures create a larger picture (particularly the themed ones). However, that usually because I like getting into the detail of the smaller images. If you were to set out to create one of these though, you would have to know the big image you wanted to create. Planning out your marketing strategy makes you do the same thing.
  
• Prioritizes What’s Important – We all know that there are 100 things you would like to do: expand into this market, target this geographic location, experiment with this platform (and every other task you also manage from product to accounting to staffing). With a plan in place, you are identifying what your most important goals and figuring out ways to accomplish them.
  
• Aligns Your Efforts – It’s easy to get caught up in specific tactics and different ways to use marketing platforms. Planning out weeks, months, or seasons at a time gives each platform a unique purpose while still integrating the same strategy across the board.
  
• Puts Pen to Paper – This is one seems like the most trivial, but has one of the largest impacts. Forbes wrote about a study that compared the earnings between those who had written down their goals and those that hadn’t. According to this study, “The 3% who had written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97% of the class combined!”

Make sure you schedule time to periodically plan (and review) your marketing campaigns. Once you have your plan in place, execution becomes [slightly] more automatic, which will allow you to focus on other tasks.

*Editor’s Note: One of those thing you can think about? Should I be using Cidewalk? Cidewalk allows you to build your local brand through mobile marketing. Hundreds of potential customers from your hometown can learn about your business every day!

Plan on checking back in for even more action tips! 

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