How to make and work your marketing plan

Figuring out how to market your business is often like trying to figure out how to write a novel. You've got tons of ideas floating around in your head and a vague vision of yourself as this amazing success. You just don't ever actually start writing. That's often because you've fallen into one of two traps: (1) You failed to write a marketing plan or (2) you spent all your time "getting ready to get ready" (Marc LeBlanc)

How to make and work your marketing plan

Today you get to cheat. It's ok, it's a good kind of cheating. I'm going to give you an outline of what kind of activities should be included in your small business marketing mix. Then, instead of staring at a blank screen wondering why all your brilliant ideas have dissipated into thin air, you'll have a place to start.
Your marketing plan should contain daily, weekly, monthly and yearly activities. 


Daily activities should have a well-defined scope (a time frame, number of calls, specific action) and might include:

• 20-minute planning session on social media topics
• Spend 20 minutes writing this week's Tweets
• Spend 20 minutes scanning Facebook updates 
• Post a single Facebook update
• Spend 30 minutes writing a blog post
• Spend 10 minutes composing new event email 
• Send New event email to current contact list
• Make one new contact call
• Respond to all comments on latest blog post
• Identify my top three activities for tomorrow

Weekly activities also need a well defined scope (specify a time frame, a day, or a person):

• Spend 20 minutes brainstorming list of new blog post topics
• Send my new flyer to my top ten advocates
• Spend 15 minutes online integrating my social media feeds
• Meet with partner to brainstorm new Facebook contest rules
• Spend 20 minutes reading associated blogs and commenting
• Attend Wednesday networking lunch 
• Meet with SoundScapes Thursday to oversee radio spot production
• Meet with printer Friday to proof business cards
• Check in with primary contact for one of my retainers
• Review video for NAPO conference
• Spend 20 minutes writing my bio as a speaker
• Spend 20 minutes making my list of next week's marketing activities

Monthly activities might include specifics and broader activities that need to be broken down:

• Speak on "how to get organized" at the library, Aug 20th
• Spend 30 minutes brainstorming new speaking opps
• Spend 30 minutes monitoring my social media numbers and measuring my success
• Spend 30 minutes updating my bookkeeping
• Get online and email the IRS for my online tax payment number
• Make my quarterly tax payment by the 10th
• Spend 30 minutes paying last month's vendors and reviewing costs
• Call contact about updating SEO keyword list
• Spend 30 minutes filling out the NAPO speaker form for 2012
• Meet with videographer to create video for NAPO presentation
• Post a new video to my YouTube site
• Get my Youtube site connected to my website
• Spend 45 minutes reviewing my yearly plan and making my list of next month's marketing activities

Yearly activities are broad (you will have to break these down into smaller activities) and might include:

• Attend two trade shows in 2011
• Attend the NAPO conference in 2012
• Apply to be a speaker at the 2012 NAPO conference
• Complete my self study course
• Design and send out one direct mail piece
• Populate my Youtube channel with at least three new videos
• Have my signs redesigned and reprinted before next trade show
• Get my affiliate program up and running on my website
• Work with someone to update my SEO and create master keyword list
• Update my marketing plan for 2012

All your marketing activities fall into two categories: 

1.  Filling the funnel

• This are activities that introduce people to your business. It might be an introductory presentation at the library or a monthly networking group. It might be an introductory 2-hour in-home session. It might be generating my social media connections. All these activities fill your funnel. 

1. Working the funnel

Once a client has had an initial experience with you, you need other kinds of marketing activities to keep that person aware of what your current offerings are. This would include letting prior clients or students know about advanced workshops and trainings, or letting them know you have a new product available. Usually, you'll have a few (say 10) top advocates. These are the people who love you and what you do and want to spread the word. Make sure they know about your current offerings.  

Yes! You can handle your social media in 20 minutes a day

If a quick scan of your Facebook news and Twitter feed is anything but quick, help yourself by creating your version of this 20-minutes-a-day plan.

1. Divide your social media outreach into daily, weekly and monthly activities. (Daily might include Twitter and Facebook, weekly might include your blog, and monthly might be attending to other social media profiles such as LinkedIn.
2. Spend one 20 minute session a week brainstorming topics. Generating topics is a completely different mental energy than writing about those topics. Start a successful "topic brainstorming session" by reviewing the prior week's email, phone and online conversations. What current questions do clients have? Where are they missing the boat? What skills do you have that could really help them? What would save them time? What would make them feel important? 
3. Consider a brainstorming partner. When you brainstorm topics with a partner, you're forced to say things out loud. Amazingly, as you explain how you would help someone or what problems your clients are having, you come up with all kinds of stunning insights on the fly. If you're not brainstorming out loud, you're missing out on a lot of fun, juicy topics. 
4. Get a note taking device. Before you get down to the serious business of writing, play with your topics. Capture ideas about your topic in a notebook or iPad or PDA. You will be delighted at how much time and stress you eliminate from any project when you sit down to write and, instead of staring at a blank screen, you begin by reviewing your ideas. Whether you use the ideas doesn't even matter. Simply reviewing them gives you a built-in starting point.
5. Divide projects into chunks that you could actually finish in 20 minutes. Can you really research a topic, write up a blog post, find or create a visual for your post, and get it all done in 20 minutes? If not, maybe your first chunk will be to research the topic and take notes, then the second chunk could be to write a lousy first draft, or even a lousy couple of paragraphs. I promise, you will end up getting more done if you only require 20 minutes of concentrated effort at a time.
6. Put your plan into your calendar. If all you need to do is glance at your calendar (be that a paper calendar, a PDA or a computer calendar) and see what's on the daily docket, you won't waste your time and energy figuring out when you last blogged. You'll be ready with your task, your topic and your notes, and yes, you will produce targeted, effective social media in 20 minutes a day. 

Are you in hiding? 5 ways to improve online visibility

This post is for those who have already identified their primary offering and key messages and are ready to transmit those messages to the world. If you’re not quite sure yet what your company’s primary offering is, read the previous blog: “Ready to stand out? A 7-step plan for writing your brand story.”

1: Turn your key messages into SEO missiles

How do you turn a key message into an SEO missile? You look at the message and ask yourself, “If I were searching for this on Google, what would I type in?” When you search, do you use marketing phrases like “how to boost my business by revving up my online presence.” Probably not. Search engines don’t work that way either. A much more typical search might be: “How to increase my visibility online.” When you want to find a tile setter, would you search for a “expert contractor with lots of tile setting experience” or a “handyman who does tile work.”

2. Use Google’s keyword tool

Once you re-write your key messages as if you were typing them into Google, you may stumble upon key words or phrases for both your industry and your service.  For example, the most widely searched term in the organizing industry is “professional organizers.” Once you know where to start, you can type that term into Google’s keyword tool at https://adwords.google.com, then select Keyword Tool from the tool menu. When you enter “professional organizer” into the Keyword Tool, you find that last month they were over 130,000 searches using this term. That’s a lot of searches. The tool also gives you clues as to how you might better target people looking for your service. There were 1,900 searches for “Certified Professional Organizer,” and “organize your home” had 9,900 searches. Look through the list of related search terms to identify what terms your target market uses to search for your service.

3. Grow a long tail

A long tail is when you combine search terms together for a more specific search. For example, a business providing professional organizer certification might want to combine the general search term “professional organizer” with another term “certification and training” to target people looking to get certified as professional organizers.

Formula 1

General Industry Search Term + General Action Term = SEO Missile

“professional organizer” + “certification & training” = “professional organizer certification & training”

Another formula for creating a long-tailed search term is to add your general industry search term to a much more specific search, such as your name, your business name or a particular service your business offers.

Formula 2

General Industry Search Term + Specific Search Term = SEO Missile

“professional organizer training” + “Clear & Simple” = “Clear & Simple professional organizer training”

4. Use your long-tailed search terms everywhere

Once you create your list of long-tailed search terms, you need to plug these into every website page, every blog post, even Facebook posts and tweets. Here are some ways you can ramp up your keyword usage.

• Add you main search term to your home page name. Your home page name is what appears after the www in your url.  In the example above, the home page should read www.clear&simple.com/professionalorganizertraining
• Add your main search term as the meta description tag. This is what shows up in Google when your business appears in search results.
• On each website page, rename the page to include once of your search terms.
• Use SEO-friendly search terms in all blogs, Facebook posts, tweets and social media profiles descriptors

5. Change your marketing speak to SEO-speak

Next time you write a blog post (or a Facebook post or even a tweet) re-write your headers and lead paragraphs to include more search engine friendly sentences. For example, you might change the header “Transform a chaotic workplace into a tidy one” to “5 ways to organize your workspace.” Words like “transform” and “chaotic” and “tidy” are probably not included in frequent search terms. It’s much more likely they are using terms like “How do I get more organized at work?” By changing the header to one more search-engine friendly, you’ll rank higher in search engine ratings and your targeted market will be able to find you easier.

If you see the importance of using SEO-friendly messages, but don’t want to write them yourself, you came to the right place. Contact Sharon at info@newinkcopy.com and become more visible online.

Ready to stand out? A 7-step plan to write your brand story

Congratulations, you launched your new service business! Your website is up and running, you printed your business cards, and you’re attending your weekly networking meetings. You’re in business. So why does finding new clients feel like running through knee-deep mud? Most likely it’s because your primary offering isn't as clear as you think. Until your brand story is written and your key messages defined, you’re still in hiding.

This business clearly targets moms

Here’s the good news. Take the time now to present your offering in clear, concise terms and it will simplify every other new business task. When you’re clear:

• Your presentations let people know exactly what you do and why you do it. 
• Your forms present potential clients with clear options and well-defined costs.
• Your marketing efforts result in new contacts who want what you offer. 

Writing a brand story and defining key messages must be the first action you take to improve your visibility. I’m not a writer, you say. Or, I know my message, I don’t need to write it out. Here’s the thing. Even good writers, really good writers like Anne Lamott, end up writing lousy first drafts that bounce all around what they want to say before they can drain the sludge and find the gems. If your brand story isn’t down on paper, and you haven’t prioritized a written list of key messages, you won’t be able to reinforce those messages in your presentations, web copy, Facebook posts, blog entries and tweets. To craft these messages, follow the steps outlined below.

First, to get a grip on your brand story, make a list—a lengthy list—of what you do and the primary benefits your clients receive from working with you. You want at least 30–40 items on this list. Insert long pause here while you go write your list.

Second, scan your list and circle all the items that jump out as part of your primary offering. Sometimes you’ll find you’ve said the same thing in different ways. At other times, your statements may still seem disconnected. Don’t worry. Right now you’re simply identifying the most important items on your list.  For example, a professional organizer might have listed items such as:

•  I help people get their paperwork in order.
• My clients benefit from my technical expertise.
•  I learn new computer programs quickly and easily.
• I help my clients convert to a paperless office.

Third, experiment with umbrella statements that collapse your selected statements into a single encompassing message. In the above example, such an umbrella statement might be:

• I provide the technical expertise to walk clients through setting up and managing a primarily paperless office.

Fourth, once you’ve plucked your primary offering from obscurity, you can select another three or four items from your list that support this primary offering. A good way to ensure that these services truly do support your primary offering is to start each sentence with:

• In order to _______, I also _______.

In the case of our professional organizer, she might say: “In order to help clients set up and manage primarily paperless offices, I also provide hands-on training in new computer systems.”

Fifth, now that you have greater clarity as to what it is that you do, describe the person who would most benefit from your service. Our professional organizer might describe her ideal client as someone who “desires to increase personal productivity through implementing technology and systems that help her work smarter.”

Sixth, begin writing your brand story by speaking directly to your ideal client. You might say, “you value personal productivity and are ready to let go of organizing systems that no longer work.” You then tell that ideal client what it is about your business that will help her solve her problems. “You want someone to help you select and implement the technology and systems that can support your productivity and professional growth.” Continue writing to your ideal client, telling her how each of your support activities will ultimately help her reach her primary goal.

Lastly, identify both a rational benefit and an emotional benefit for choosing your business. This statement is written from the client's point of view. For our professional organizer, the rational benefit might be:

•  ____’s expertise will help me select the most robust productivity systems, and will provide the hands-on training I need to implement those systems successfully.

The emotional benefit for the same business might be:

• I feel relieved and able to implement new systems, since I know I will get the support I need to see this transition through.

If, once you start drafting your brand story, you decide you want additional support in moving through all seven steps, contact me at New Ink. I’ve written hundreds of brand stories and will help you craft yours in a way that lets you stand out, no matter how crowded your marketplace. Contact Sharon at info@newinkcopy.com. 

Travel memories

A log rests precariously on the edge of a rocky ledge. I took this photo while traveling through British Colombia last week. The area is part of Francis Point Provincial Park, wilds that have only been open to the public for a few years. They feel raw, undisturbed by humans, elemental.

How memory worksBut what happened in my brain when I saw the log, and what in addition had to happen for me to remember it? The simple answer is a network of neurons fired and a memory was born. But memories are not available for retrieval like items left in a locker at the train depot. Retrieving the memory requires the repeat firing of the same network of neurons. These neurons are spread all over the cortex with no single commander telling them when to fire. We now know that “neurons that fire together, wire together,” but how do we get a mass of neurons to fire together again without repeat exposure to what made them fire in the first place? It’s not like we can carry around a set of flashcards, like foreign language students, drilling our brains to recall our favorite memories. Viewing a photo can help evoke a memory or taking the time to write about something in a journal or blog, or yes, even tweet about it. These all help. But how does the brain remember one-time events without such memory devices?

Memory is making connections
Memory is making connections, linking one thing to another. Much of this linkage is subconscious and we preserve memories of events that can be activated by encountering something as simple as a smell. Re-encountering a smell that was part of an original sensory experience can cause the entire network of neurons involved in the memory to fire. Thus when I smell old wallpaper, I often recall sleeping in my Grandma’s house the week before she died in a bedroom with rose wallpaper and a white crocheted coverlet.

The brain's ability to form and retain connections makes comprehension possible. To a mind that cannot make connections (as studies on epilepsy and amnesia patients have shown) each instant is an isolated event without continuity, each thought fleeting and unrelated, each precept without relevance, each person a stranger, every event unexpected. No connections between the past, present and future would be like living a life with total amnesia.

Connecting an event to our life story makes it memorableSo memories are strings of neurons that fire together. But what’s interesting to me is the role our life stories play in what we remember and what we forget? Encounters become memorable when we link them to something known. We use phrases like “I put two and two together,” or “Fill in the dots” to describe how one thing gets linked to another in our minds. A life story is a valuable tool for organizing and connecting otherwise random events. You could think of your life story as a substrate upon which new memories are built. This substrate contains themes and characters, even expected plot twists and endings. When we connect a current event to a known theme or a known character, the new event is remembered. But there’s a drawback to this helpful memory aid. We often ignore the ways in which the new events or the new people are unique, different from what we’ve previously encountered.

Every new event has novel elements
A 2009 experiment by psychologist Daniel L. Schacter of Harvard showed that neuronal firing in the brain is different every single time a subject experiences an event, even when the circumstances are quite similar. Our brains have evolved to not only link things together through an ongoing narrative, but also to see what’s different this time around. To me that means, no matter how important our life stories are, they are not us. We can continue to see through them, around them. We can draw apart the veil they cast over our current experience and direct our attention to what’s different. To me, this is the true power of "living in the now."

Attention allows us to shape our life stories
The ability to direct our attention allows us to continue to shape our life stories throughout our lives. We are not stuck with some scratched record that keeps playing the same line of a song over and over. We can use our life stories to make sense of new events while also using our attention to expand our stories through those events. The story provides general categories (themes) and our ongoing experiences provide the ability move beyond the general and perceive differences. These perceived differences can then lead to new categories (new themes). For example, a general theme that “men cannot be trusted,” can benefit from the brain's ability to discriminate differences leading to “some men cannot be trusted, but Tim can.”

Working backwards
Once we know that neurons anchor life experiences by connecting them to our life stories (with their themes and characters and expected endings), we can expand our life experience. All we need to do is to look for what's different. If you have a story about so-and-so being unreliable, you can ask your brain to look for at least three instances in which so-and-so was actually reliable. If you have a story about never being lucky, you can ask your brain to find at least three instances in which you were the lucky one. Soon, instead of seeing all life events as unlucky, you’ll begin to notice that there is always more going on, always more you could turn your attention to, should you choose to do so. This is the gift of attention. I, for one, choose to turn my attention towards thoughts that feel good. When I'm distressed, I look for thoughts that feel kind, thoughts that feel accepting, thoughts that feel peaceful. I can always find a better feeling thought.

How are you directing your attention?

My thanks to Anthony Greene, Associate Professor of Psychology at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for helping me shape these thoughts. Pr. Greene runs a learning and memory lab.

How our life stories impact our reality

A life story is a running narrative that impacts the present by filtering perceptions, highlighting certain sensory impressions and subordinating others. But a life story does more than influence our perception of the present. A life story also reshapes our memory of the past and our anticipation of the future.

Why we need a life story
We use this running narrative to place any single live event within the flux of an entire lifetime of events. We use it to decide what that individual event means—what it means about who we are, how we relate to others and what life holds in store for us. Without an ongoing narrative, each event would be spliced up and floating, sans context, in a meaningless sea of other bits and pieces.

Life stories come from the left hemisphere
New brain research can now show us (through fMRI scans, stroke victim research and split-brain re-search) that it is the left hemisphere of the brain that is the storyteller. The left hemisphere wants to string things together into a linear pattern, while the right hemisphere tries to observe the whole at once. In other words, our life story considers a distorted portion of our external reality, and is not built around some true representation of “the way things are.”

The way things are
In their 1966 book, The Social Construction of Reality, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann argue that all knowledge, including the most basic, taken-for-granted common sense knowledge of everyday reality, is derived from and maintained by social interactions. This theory, later extrapolated as social constructivism, can help us understand socially what brain research shows neurologically. Objective reality is a slippery slope, and what we see, think and feel is a construction of pieces rather than a given whole.

We have to believe it to see it
We have all heard the expression, “I’ll have to see it to believe it.” In large measure, the opposite is true. We have to believe something is possible before we can see its manifestation in the world around us. As Paul Simon said, “A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.” This is a literal description of how our eyes see. Our eyes take in sensory impressions, but from perceiving to seeing, the information our eyes relay is translated into “mental inventions.” The neurons in our brains respond to these mental inventions, and only after this translation has occurred does the image become conscious. Our underlying beliefs about what we’re seeing, based upon our interpretations of past experience, factor into the mental invention stage of seeing before we are even conscious that we are seeing anything at all. Basically, we don’t get a conscious say in what we decide to see. Vision is automatic, yes, but it’s also constructed—each and every glimpse.

Do you see the smiley face in the photo of the moon and stars or in the plant photo at the beginning of this post? Your ability to form mental categories is what allows you to think of it as a smiley face. In the same way you see a smiley face when there is no face at all, you also see representations of bits of your life story everywhere you go and in every interaction you have.

The life story’s greatest gift
A life story bestows a hugely important gift on each of us. It gives us a sense of self. We use our running narratives to perceive things as happening to a single consciousness. No story line, no sense of self. But stories of all kinds are by nature limiting. By placing a frame around our perceptions, they keep some in and others out. That’s why careful examination of the tone, themes, and buried beliefs in our life stories has rare value. I teach a life stories class for the University of Utah’s Lifelong Learning program that steps participants through this discovery process and would like to open up a similar online exploration. If you are interested in meeting with an group to explore your life story, please feel free to contact me at Sharon@newinkcopy.com.

The concept comes first

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Concepting is the most demanding part of my job. A concept is not a design, not a visual, and not text. It's an idea that brings all those elements together with seemingly effortless grace. Clients and readers must get it in a glance. It can require no thought, but must be clever enough to catch attention. Like I said, it's the most demanding part of my job.

Target moms was the concept for the XIGO product launch. 
The day begins. The creative director makes a simple statement. "We need a concept for this piece." What he means is, go knock your brains out and come up with no less than 40 original, creative ideas for how to communicate the story of this brand.. product... offering, etc. He's been doing this a long time. He knows it's not going to be the 7th idea, or even the 27th that moves forward. It's usually somewhere around 38 or 39 that I finally get an idea with enough juice to carry a brand--or a brochure--or an ad.

The concept seems obvious after the fact. One of the best tests of a good concept is that, once you come up with it, it seems so obvious. Of course this is the way to convey this message. Of course this is our brand story. How could it be anything else? It speaks to the heart of what the client is trying to convey. And when you're lucky enough to hit the bulls eye, the client may even think they came up with it, it's that "right on."

The concept is not a training manual. Concepts are simple. They require no explanation beyond a headline, or at most, a subhead. Their purpose is not to educate the reader on the ins and outs of a business. No one should need to read the body copy to understand a concept, or have the clever meaning behind the concept explained to them. As a former university teacher, I often forget about this rule. I want to explain. I want to lay it out for my reader why this concept is so cool, if you just think about it this way. To guard against this "teacher tendency," I make myself scan my list of concepts on the printed page and ask, "Would they get it in a glance?" If not, it hits the trash.

The concept cannot wander off. Often I'll come up with a killer concept. It really gets the message across. Then I realize, yes, it's getting the message across, but it's not the right message. Sigh. I've been carried deeper into the forest, following creative breadcrumbs only to realize I've lost the original message. I had it somewhere back at the beginning, but I went astray. There's nothing to do but tuck your igeniuous, irrelevant message away for future use and return to the beginning of the path.

When a concept works, your reader remembers it. They think about it while jogging the next day. They have a little chuckle. Their brain automatically pulls up the image you linked with the copy and registers a positive emotion. You've done it. You've married a brand to an emotional response. You've raised recognition. You've engendered loyalty. You've sparked interest to know more. Congratulations, you can now call yourself a "concepter."