
Do You Know Your Way on the Road to Success? Flickr Image by Patxi Izkue
It’s time to rev up your business and your life in 2012.
The beauty of our relationship with God is that He has entrusted us with talents and abilities.
Proverbs 21:5 says, Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity, but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty.
He wants us to use those talents and abilities to bless others and to reflect His glory. In order to use our talents and abilities to their fullest, we will need to have a good plan which will allow us to execute our vision with hard work. And that’s where a marketing plan comes in.
Here are a few questions to guide you as you formulate your marketing plan for 2012:
#1 What Is Your Reason For Being in Business?
In other words, why does your business exist?
Here’s an example of my newly formulated purpose for my blog’s existence:
“To help readers identify their own talents and skills; to help them formulate their own personal growth plan; and to inspire them to lead with their individual brands.”
Here’s Rod Kirby’s purpose, which I quote from his “Start Here” page on this site:
My mission is to connect Christian entrepreneurs with people, tools, and resources to help them become successful in their businesses.
If you’d like some help in defining the mission statement for your business, I encourage you to read Michael Holmes’ article, The Importance of ‘Purpose’ for the Christian Entrepeneur .
You will also find Rod Kiby’s article, Vision – Fuel For The Future, to be helpful on this topic.
#2 What Sets Your Business Apart from the Rest?
Is it your focus on God and how you bring that focus into your writing?
Is it your focus on exceptional service to your customers and readers?
What unique skills and talents do you bring to your business?
You may want to consider entering keywords from your business into the search engines to see what your competition is doing. Now think about how you can do what they’re doing, only differently, and better.
#3 Who Is Your Ideal Customer?
One way you can find out about your ideal customer is to go to Alexa.Com and look up your blog. Alexa provides many helpful demographics, including age, gender, level of education, and where readers come from.
Once you’ve found out about your readers, you may want to ask yourself whether you want to continue writing for them, or whether there are other groups you want to market and sell to.
Think about who you would most like to help:
What is this customer’s problem(s)?
What does she/he want or need?
Here are some suggestions for finding out what your potential customers want
- Survey Your Readers. You can use WordPress plugins or you can e-mail your subscribers from your newsletter list.
- Read Your Comments: You can learn a lot from your readers, if you take the time to listen to them!
- Read Other Top Blogs in Your Niche: when you go to Google, type in a keyword for your niche. Look on the left hand side under “search” and click on “more”. You will see Blogs in the dropdown menu.
- Use Twitter search to read about your ideal customer.
- This is a tip I learned from Pat Flynn at the Smart Passive Income Blog: Look up books in Amazon under keywords for your topic: what are the key problems and solutions offered in the table of contents in the preview? These topics can give you ideas of what your ideal customer is looking for.
#4 What Do You Want to Accomplish This Year?
Write down all your ideas!
Maybe, like me, you need to completely re-assess your blog, your business plan, or your methods of carrying out your business plan.
In that case, take advantage of Rod Kirby’s two for one coaching special! I am personally working with Rod to look at my blog through entrepreneur lenses, and he’s already made a big difference in just one hour of coaching.
Maybe you want to double your subscriber or email count.
Or, do you want to enhance your blog design?
I know I’m mentioning Rod Kirby a lot in this article, but I happen to know that he’s got graphic art and web design skills. You may also want to consider Fiverr (less expensive, lower quality) and 99 Designs (more expensive, higher quality)
Maybe you want to become more professional in your email marketing
Or you may want to add podcasting or YouTube to your methods of getting your marketing message out to a completely new audience.
Once you’ve written everything down, you will want to select the top 3 goals that will get you to where you want to be.
For example, I have 3 goals in re-working my own blog, Personal Success Factors.
I will
A) Talk to top bloggers I respect regarding their designs, who designed them, and decide who I will hire based on my budget and design needs,
B) Continue my coaching process with Rod Kirby to enhance my blog and sharpen my marketing focus,
C) And, I will learn how to podcast and make videos in order to get my marketing message out to different/new audiences.
#5 How Much Will Each of Your Action Steps Contribute to Your Revenue/Profitability?
Think in terms of percentages.
For example,
- 25% of your revenues might come from your new podcast, along with any affiliate links you soft sell during your podcast.
- Another 25% might come from producing quality video clips that you post on YouTube.
- Another 25% might come from coaching.
- And another 25% might come from an e-book you design.
Once you have your 3 goals, write each goal on a sheet of paper.
Make that goal SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-limited)
Then write a list of 10 ‘next actions’ you will take to reach those goals.
It could be helpful to concentrate the first 3 months of the year to just working on your first goal. Then take the next goal and work on it for the next 3 months. And spend the final 3 months on the last goal. I think you get the idea.
#6 How Much Money Will You Need to Get Your Goals Done?
Make a list of all the materials you will need to get each item done. Then look at your current savings level. It’s a good idea NOT to go into debt in order to finance your goals.
You may want to review Rod’s article, 5 Ways to Start A Business without Going into Debt, as a way to review this subject.
Be creative!
Is there a joint venture you can embark on, where you provide sweat equity in exchange for another entrepreneur putting up some capital.
Or are there sub-goals you can take toward your main goal prior to laying out all the money needed?
I hope you’ve found these six questions helpful to you as you create your marketing plan for 2012. God wants you to succeed! So get to work!
Is it time to re-vamp YOUR marketing plan? Did you accomplish everything you set out to do this year? What are YOUR goals for 2012 and what are you doing now to achieve them? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Disclaimer: We will never share your email address with anyone, period.
About the Author

Steve Borgman is the author of the blog
Personal Success Factors, which is dedicated to help you achieve your next level of excellence in your personal development. You can find him there sharing success tips and more!
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