Having an effective marketing plan in place

Marketing plans are essential to ensure that your activities are implemented in a timely manner but do we have time to actually generate them and where to start? Valerie Delforge offers her advice. You can buy all sorts of planners from the internet, however you really need to have one that “talks to you”, that you understand and work with. Consider it as your working documents that holds all the monthly activities you are generating within your business. What should your planner consist of? Remember that your marketing activity does not have to be an offer, it can be a theme, hero product, treatment of the month – whatever works for your business.

• Treatment activities: Is there an offer on a complementary treatment with each blow dry? A focus on colour?
• Retail activities: Product of the month, gift with purchase – anything retail related.
• In salon activities: Do you have any seasonal promotions planned around a seasonal even such as Easter, Christmas or Valentine’s Day - special decorations for the salon over a particular festive period?
• Gift vouchers: Always good to push them and have a focus for key months.
• Outside events/networking: What is happening within your local community that you are part of?
• Email to your database: What mail will you generate this month and what dates will they be coming out?
• Social media: Campaigns, competitions and dates of your communication to your audience.
• Follow up: Any campaigns need to have a measurement of it success; with every marketing activity you should be able to analyse them with detailed figures. A lot of time the team assumes: “yes it was ok” when you only had two people taking on the offer. Tangible results are the only ones that mean anything.

 How do I plan? You work per quarter:

• In January you start thinking of your detailed marketing for April, May, June
• In April, you plan for July, August and September
• In July it’s all about October, November and December (Hence why all the PR agency always have their press event for Christmas in July)
• In October you plan for January, February and March

Working per quarter allows you to think ahead, network in the best way, organise future events in a timely and professional manner. The key is to put aside 1 day a week and you will be on top of it all. Some might say that it’s impossible, then consider by-monthly. The more you are organised with your activities the easier the implementation. Once you start seeing the results, you will want to put that time aside for your marketing. Assess your goal With any marketing plan, it is important to know who you want to target and how you want to do that. Your activities will be a lot more focused and you will be more likely to talk to your audience. For example: if you want to attract young mums with pram in quiet times, your outside activities could be a link with the local coffee shop where they go every morning after school drop off. What will you organise? A voucher? An incentive for their staff? A price list? It is important to think of your marketing planner as your ideas that develop through the year. The planner also helps with your communication to your team. If you are on holiday, anyone can look at the planner and know what is happening within your business. Valerie Delforge is founder and CEO of consultancy Delforge + Co www.delforge.co