Those of you that attended WPE will remember Action Coach who gave a brilliant talk on improving our businesses. One of the coaches Ray Hutchin  has kindly agreed to be a regular guest blogger. Today he talks about your marketing plan, do you have one? As my coach I can vouch the benefits of putting your marketing plan down on paper and sticking to it.

It is very interesting when I speak to business owners regarding Marketing Plans for their business, most do not have a written one. So why is it important to have a written marketing plan? Well there are a few reasons including:-

• a) Most things are achieved quicker with a plan (if it is followed)
• b) You will know where you are and what you should be doing (therefore more chance of you actually doing it)
• c) The plan in future should only need fine tuning (not completely rewriting) therefore planning and making things happen in the future will be easier
• d) It will give you focus
• e) You will make more money

I was talking to a client only yesterday and discussing him implementing a marketing plan and we worked out some figures for him, which actually left him speechless. So for your benefit the exercise with him went something like this after some discussion around the plan:-

Coach “So if we implement a telesales marketing campaign and put a process in place as we have discussed, so that we send out 100 flyers a week and contact those people the following week. We expect to be able to speak to about 30 businesses a week and to be able to arrange 5 face to face meetings a week to discuss your product and services. You also expect to be able to convert 2 of those to clients a week (only a conversion rate of 40% which is low for you)

Client “yes coach we will do that”

Coach “so what do you think that will mean to your business”

Client “well an increase in profits, so that we can continue to grow and develop the business”

Coach “any idea of how much more business and profit?”

Client “a few thousand!”

Coach “well, let’s work it out,  So if we sign up two new clients a week for the first year the average will be say 50 new clients for the year (2 the first week and 104 the last week), so what is your client average spend per week and your Gross Profit percentage?”

Client “Average spend is £100 a week and we make 14% Gross Profit on average”

Coach “ok so if we have an average of 100 new clients for the year spending £100 a week and you are making 14% GP that gives us – 50 new clients times 50 weeks, times £100 average spend, which gives us an increase in turnover of £250,000”

Client “you sure you got those sums right?”

Coach (hands calculator to client) I think so, you work it out

Client “wow, and that is only one strategy”

Coach ” and that is without working on increasing the conversion rate or the average spend etc, etc, but bear in mind that not all of the new client will stay with you for the whole year”

Client “but I am sure any I lose I can replace”

Coach “now work out the extra Gross Profit”

Client “Wow, that’s an extra £35,000”

So by introducing one new marketing strategy and doing it every week great results can be achieved. However, most people don’t do this, they have a big splurge and then get too busy with the extra work to carry on the marketing and then only do it when things go quiet again. Marketing needs to be done week in week out and monitored (test and measured) and fine tuned and new strategies added as and when necessary. Small changes equal big results. I would love to hear of any small changes that you have made in your business, that has given you huge results.