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World Executives Digest | There are a few things every business needs: a mission, vision, and set of values with which to do business; a strategy for getting their business off the ground and growing over time; a marketing plan to help spread the word about their products and services, and a way to track growth to understand if they are moving in the right direction. Plans are great. But what about the execution of those plans. How can business owners ensure they are going to do right by their plans? Whether you are doing research to learn more about how to market your dispensary or you want to bring more customers into your used clothing shop, how you execute on that plan is going to make all the difference.
Review it Often
Having a marketing plan is one thing; ensuring that it is updated and relevant to what your business is doing now is another. A lot of business owners will take the time to create initial plans, especially strategic plans, and then never look at them again. When you treat these plans like your bible, you are more likely to get meaningful information out of them and be able to put more meaningful information into them. Reviewing your marketing plans often will not only help keep you moving forward, it will ensure you are doing the things you planned instead of just throwing ideas in the air on a whim.
Trial and Error
As with most things in life and business, you need to be willing to try what you’ve planned, but change on a dime. When it comes to marketing your business, you need to be flexible and adaptable when you get more information from your target market. The initial planning is very important, but the adoption of flexibility is also important to ensure your business continues to go down the right path. If you are rigid and stuck on a plan, you might lose out on great marketing opportunities that would otherwise prove lucrative.
Get Outside of Your Comfort Zone
When it comes to marketing your business and executing on your marketing plan, you need to be able to challenge your own plan and see if there are ways to show up and make more noise. A lot of new business owners will play small at first and not want to rock the boat, despite needing to drive sales and contracts. It’s a lot easier to just do what you know or hire someone to do it for you, but if you want to make a great impact and derive value from your marketing plan, you need to get outside your comfort zone and shake things up a bit as you go. Executing on your plan perfectly as it is written out is not the end goal: the marketing plan is meant to act as a guide to help you see any opportunities that are presented to you.
Measure
The last thing you need to do when executing on your marketing plan in an effective way is to make sure you measure everything. No detail is too small as you start to launch against your original plan. Measurement allows you to see where small and big changes need to be made. If you are paying hundreds of dollars a day for ads on Facebook and they aren’t translating to sales, you need to change things up and measure the reactions. One ad, one day, one dollar is not going to provide you with meaningful information that can help you grow your business. When it comes to executing on your marketing plan, you need to know where you are and where you are going. Marking how you get there is the best way to ensure your marketing plan delivers as expected so you can grow your business as hoped.
