4 Things to Tweak in Your Small Business Marketing Calendar

4 Ways to Tweak in Your Small Business Marketing Calendar

In these last weeks of the year, I hope that you’ve found a few moments to sit down with your business plan for the new year and map out your own small business marketing calendar for next year (or mark up one of mine, by adding your own events, holidays, offers and promotions) all of the ways you plan to work to attract new customers, engage them, motivate them to take the actions you want them to take and keep them coming back, and hopefully keep them coming back more often than they did before.

Because isn’t that what marketing is really all about?  If you’re spending time on activities that aren’t meant to achieve one (or more, or all) of those 4 goals:  attracting clients, engaging clients, motivating clients or retaining clients, then you are spending time on marketing activities that aren’t about marketing (and may be a waste of time and money).

With that in mind, I’m going to suggest that during the coming year, you tweak your small business marketing plan in four ways that will get you more focused on those four marketing goals, so that the time and money you spend on marketing activities actually helps you get more customers.

So that your marketing plan helps you get your customers more engaged with your business, so that they are more likely to purchase more stuff from your business and to return for your services more often.

So that these customers that you have attracted and who are now interested in your business will then be motivated to take the actions you want them to take, like referring friends and family to your business, attending events, participating in rewards programs, purchasing packages or signing up for long term commitments.

And so that these customers you’ve attracted and engaged and who are now motivated to take the actions you want them to take then keep coming back, identify themselves as connected with the brand of your business and begin to feel like they wouldn’t, couldn’t possibly go anywhere else.

Here are 4 ways to tweak your small business marketing calendar so that you can attract, engage, motivate and retain more customers in the New Year:

1.  Make it more systematic.  While it doesn’t sound very marketing-sexy, consistency of brand presentation and frequency go hand in hand. Building a bigger role in the lives of your clients depends on your actually being present in their lives, and you can’t do that if you’re not engaged in systematic, scheduled and timely communications both online and off.

2.  Make it bolder.  People are busy. Even if what your business provides is something they desperately need, is far superior to competing products or services or can make the lives of members of your target markets infinitely better, you still have to break through the marketing clutter in order to get their attention.

3.  Make it more seductive.  People don’t want to be sold, they want to be seduced.  They want to be attracted, to feel the allure of something, feel the desire for something and then choose to obtain that something for themselves.  No matter what business you are in, your business needs to be attractive – irresistibly alluring – to members of your target audience.

4.  Make it more focused.  Gas stations and grocery stores have broad target markets, in fact, they can afford to be “everything to everyone” when it comes to their approach to marketing, advertising, events and promotions.  But it’s likely that your business cannot.  Make sure that your 2013 marketing plan is focused on marketing that is specifically tailored to members of your target markets and ideal client types.  Being more focused in your strategy and tactics is the only way to attract more individuals who fall within these categories.

It’s very nearly a new year and my hope is that your next year’s small business marketing calendar will help you build a bigger role for your business in the lives of your clients, prospects, employees and community.  It’s going to be a great year!

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