With only two months left for the year, there's still time gather your successes for 2009 and build your platform for 2010. While this has been a year for the record books, I'm certain next year will bring a powerhouse of possibilities. If you are a small business owner, thinking of starting a business or may be a corporate division head thinking what you need to do to expand your outreach using social and new media, here's the four step game plan you need:
Step 1: Assess your market
Who is your target market? If you haven't narrowed it down, this is the time. If you talk to everyone, you're really talking to no one. Find out who's your niche: Who can afford what you offer right now? This may be vastly different than last year or last month's answer. But it's time to drill down and get specific.
Step 2: Are you finding your target audience where they are online?
You can only know this by asking the people in your target audience. If you're trying to sell a fabulous fantasy trip to restore your spirit, mind and body to Malta for next spring and know your audience is women from 45-65, find out where they are online. Would Twitter be your best bet? Probably not since the market for that platform skews younger. But e-mail would be perfect and also using blogs and e-zine databases to build up your SEO.
Step 3: Are you offering and communicating value?
This is a tough concept since as business owners we like to think that everything we do confers value but ask someone outside of your office to look at what you're offering and give you feedback. Ideally, ask someone in your target audience. What is valuable to a boomer may not be valuable to a Gen Xer.
Step 4: Are you marketing consistently?
Marketing is a process, not an event. It's tough if you approach your marketing in a stop-and-start fashion to get any real traction. Schedule it on your calendar or use software to help do things automatically and disperse it over the week such as software to publish your blog posts.
What marketing plans or initiatives are you working on now or are you playing it safe? Click comment below and share.
Alison Woo, Chief Media Maven
