"Network Solutions - Small business conversations and working together for small business success" - 4 new articles
Action Plans - Part 12 of the 2009 Marketing Plan SeriesLast time in part 11 of the marketing plan series we discussed the Marketing Strategy which is basically the “what” of executing your plan and identifying your goals. Now, we move on to the Action Plan which covers the “Who, Where and How Much” of your plan. You should look at this section as the “to do list with budget numbers” and separate it into sub-sections or “mini-plans” that are involved in your marketing efforts. They can include but are not limited to the following: - Publicity Marketing Plan – How do you pitch? I am not talking fastballs, but rather using the media to spread the word about your business. You could also call this mini-plan your media plan and it includes the costs and tasks involved in pitching stories to the press and writing press releases on a consistent basis. - Customer Marketing Plan - No small business can survive without customers and smart business know that it is FAR cheaper to keep the customers you have than always working to replace them with new ones. This mini-plan talks about what activities you will undertake with your current customers and the types of targeted offers you will be making to retain them. - Advertising Plan - Now we all know that most traditional advertising is hit or miss and it is hard to track results. However, there are more and more promotional programs that provide you with a way to measure results that you can create a mini-plan of where you are going to advertise and how much of it you will be doing. - Internet Marketing Plan - Every one these days has a web site. If you don’t and you are small business, then that is another matter. If you are a small business that is actively engaged on the web to promote your products or services then you need to include a separate mini-plan on Internet marketing that could include search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising and any other online campaigns. - Promotional Event Plan – Related to advertising and Internet marketing the promotional event plan includes different promotional activities such as, having sales, sponsoring contests, awards, or events. - Referral Marketing Plan - All small businesses need referral business. In fact, it is how many survive and even thrive. Here is where you need to identify specific programs that will add incentive for those that value your work enough to tell others about you. Budgeting - The Bottom Line We all wish we could do awesome and cool marketing campaigns but we are quickly brought back to reality when the limitations of our budgets are staring us in the face. Small Business Notes provides some great advice on putting together your budget.
Event Review: Government 2.0 Camp, Mar 27-28, 2009Friday and Saturday of last week saw the inaugural Government 2.0 Camp unconference (an unconference is basically an unstructured conference, where every attendee is a participant and potential presenter. Some unconferences are like Fight Club — if it’s your first time, you have to present.) Government 2.0 Camp was all about bringing together people — government, academia, nonprofit, private sector — interested in applying all this great Web 2.0, social media, and online community stuff to government — particularly, in light of the specific challenges that government faces. I’ll be doing a few more posts about some specific issues I picked up on from Government 2.0 Camp, so I will spare you a blow-by-blow retelling of the event — check out the river of Twitter posts tagged #gov20camp, the great session listings and recaps at the Government 2.0 Club site, and the search results for “gov20camp” for blog entries, photos, video, and other media generated by the event. Instead, here are a few general notes: Government 2.0 Camp bloggers transcribe the session schedule. * The event ran Friday and Saturday. Unconferences I’ve typically been to are weekend-only, though paradoxically, the Friday session was meant (I presume) to attract more government types. After all, who wants to sacrifice a full weekend when you can get a paid day off? * The event was free to attendees (thanks to the many sponsors), so the organizers limited the registrations to non-government folk early, to ensure a good mix of government and private sector. In practice, though, no one was checking names at the door, so anyone could have come in. In another one of those paradoxical things, maybe government types should be charged a few hundred bucks. After all, there’s the mentality of “How could anything free be any good?” (Hence the perpetual conference / junket racket that caters to government and corporate clients.) * The first day started out with a round-the-room introduction of all the participants. Since we were in an auditorium of about 500 people, this felt like a Really Bad Idea That Would Take Forever, but it actually worked out pretty well — people were limited to saying: 1. Their name 2. Their affiliation (title, company — some folks got a little more advertising mileage out of this than others) 3. Three words — tags, if you will — to describe their expertise, interests, or what they wanted to get from the day (Me: “Just. Another. Consultant.”) 4. A session topic (if they were interested in leading a session). Having an event-wide introduction also made sense, because it helped identify the different government entities in the room and what they were trying to get out of it. Off the top of my head, represented agencies included: Homeland Security / TSA, Agriculture, FTC, DoD, State Department, the Maryland Governor’s Office, Air Force [the best represented of the service branches, I think], Navy, Army, IRS, NOAA, EPA, HHS, EEOC, NASA, Library of Congress, and the White House. * There were a lot of sessions — about 14 simultaneous sessions in each day’s 4-5 slots. The organizers did a pretty good job of scheduling sessions and consolidating them as needed (which is one way from keeping unconference sessions from turning into complete chaos). Though with 13 other sessions going on at any one time, there’s bound to be buyer’s remorse. Unconference etiquette specifically encourages you to get up and switch to another session if you feel like it (monitoring the Twitter stream comes in handy for this), but in reality, switching sessions midstream is kind of like channel-switching: If you do too much, you’re not going to get anything from any session. Anyway, I’ll get into some specific issues in later posts, so I’ll just say here that it was a really good event, organized by a few motivated individuals, at no cost to the taxpaying public. And I was glad to see the various government agencies represented — some were a little farther than others, but then you don’t really need to meet the people who “get” it — you need to meet the people who don’t (yet). Small businesses are optimistic, regardless of the current gloomy economic situation : Roy Dunbar CEO on Fox NewsRoy Dunbar CEO of Network Solutions spoke to Jenna Miller on Fox Business about Small Business and their optimism despite the economy. During the conversation Roy and Jenna discussed the findings of the Small Business Success Index and the pulse of Small Business. The Small Business Success Index (www.growsmartbusiness.com) that Network Solutions and the University of Maryland where more than 1,000 small business owners were interviewed by phone for the Small Business Success Index and results show that 69% of the small business respondents made a profit in 2008. We believe that entrepreneurs and small businesses can use the Small Business Success Index to optimize their performance for maximum success.
The interview can be seen on the Fox Business website . The 5th Annual New Communications Forum :April 27th - 29th, 2009: San Francisco, CALast year I attended the 3rd Annual SNCR Research Symposium & Awards in Boston. The presentations were full of research and findings. Here is some on the presentations that can be seen here:
I am honored, that along with Geoff Livingston SNCR Fellow, I will be presenting Online Reputation Management – Best Practices & Lessons Learned at the NewComm Forum 2009 The agenda contains award-winning case studies, best practices and lessons learned for:
In addition discussions on the hottest topics, including
Since I am speaking I get a special offer for friends and colleagues
See previous post about the coverage of the SNCR summit on the Network Solution ’s Blog Beth Dunn’s coverage on Small Dots Blog NewComm Post on Network Solutions winning the SNCR Excellence Award for Online Reputation Management More Recent Articles
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