A marketing campaign is a series of steps designed to achieve a specific result. Think of it as the big picture that includes detailed, step-by-step guidelines for one particular goal you want to achieve. Marketing campaigns are broken into two parts:
I talked previously about How To Write A Business Plan. This article will be a bit longer and more detailed.
A business plan is your road map to success. Think about it. We plan all our major life events: vacations, weddings, buying a house, retirement - even what will happen to our assets when we die. We plan so we and others working with us understand what we want to accomplish and have an idea of how we’ll go about accomplishing it. Why should your business be any different?
Your business plan is your model for how you do business. It’s a document that anyone can pick up and understand where your business currently is, where you hope to be in the future, and what steps you’ll take to get there. That may sound like common sense, but many entrepreneurs get bogged down in the details of writing a 50-page plan with their business plan software, crank out a massive document, and file it away, never to look at it again. Read more…
Most people start their own business for the freedom. They want to be their own boss and set their own hours. Yet, those who do make the leap to self employment often find themselves working 14 hours a day, 7 days a week and never seem to have enough time to do everything nor enough money to hire someone to do it for them.
How do you break that vicious cycle? Start putting systems in place. Simply put, a system is a step by step process that you follow to complete a particular task so that you get a specific outcome. Instead of reinventing the wheel each time you must do something, you have a written checklist of steps that you (or your employees or vendors) can follow to complete the task “your way”. By creating systems, you can easily teach someone else how to do what you do, then hand off the tasks so you have more time to focus on more important things. Read more…
Many small business owners dread the idea of cranking out a business plan, but writing your business plan doesn’t need to be painful. In fact, it can be quite enlightening and give you a different perspective on your business. Read more…