Small Business Blog

Marketing Implementation Process: Get Your Marketing Ideas Executed

We are bombarded by information every day. This article is simply another example. It's one idea out of millions about small business and marketing. The challenge is to make sense of all this information, not go into overwhelm, and most importantly; IMPLEMENT for results!

Execution and implementation is everything. Marketing ideas, business ideas, information, and knowledge are all worthless, in a pure business sense, unless you can take action. How many times have you learnt something new or been reminded about a good marketing idea, but when it comes down to it… you find you don’t have the time or resources to implement it.

Why is this?

Simple. We don’t often have a clear way (a process) of taking information and doing something useful with it. Even if the action is to record the idea and note that we can’t execute right now, this puts it to bed. We are great consumers of information; books, newspapers, tv, magazines, and the internet. Knowledge, information and ideas are everywhere, what we are missing are ways to simplify and DO something with it. Enter a way to implement and execute your marketing ideas;

Marketing Implementation Process

Turn information and ideas into; who is doing what, by when. The marketing implementation process is broken down into 3 simple parts, 1 page each. This gives you, and any other person on the team, a clear visual roadmap of your marketing efforts for the next 3 months. At the end of the month, keep rolling the roadmap out so you always have a 3 month plan (1 month off, add another 1 on). The three parts are;

1. Marketing Development Plan

What marketing strategies do you want to do in the near future? What are the ideas that will take some effort to get up and running? What are the existing strategies or tactics you have that could really do with improvement, some enhancement, some development? Write the ideas down. Get it out of your head and onto paper. Once on paper (or in a Word file) you can then decide which ideas will get developed in the next three months, and which ones will sit until you may or may not do something with it in the future. It could go a little like this;

2. Marketing Activity Plan

Marketing activity is basically what strategies and tactics you are doing or going to be doing. What are the activities that have to be done on a regular and ongoing basis. When are they to be done, and by whom?

3. Marketing Dairy Schedule

This could easily be the most important part to this process for most people. I’ve seen the best laid plans fail because they miss the scheduling of regular activities (or development) into a fixed time slot. These activities MUST happen in order for you to progress. Do this in outlook or whatever calendar you use, but basically you need to block out times for things like...

Jill's Scheduled Marketing Tasks:
Mon - Fri: 9am - 10am, Sales Calls

Mon: 10am - 12pm, Marketing Development Tasks

Tue: 10am - 11am, LinkedIn Engagement (Group Article Submission + Group Discussion)

etc

Action Points

• Highlight this article, then cut and paste into a Word document.
• Delete the text, keep the tables, turn the document to landscape, then add 8 more columns to the right (the next weeks ahead).
• Edit document as required.
• Now, be disciplined with yourself and follow what you have set out.