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January 21, 2010

Do you even HAVE a strategic markting plan?

For a group of people who specialize in advising others, consultants tend to be atrocious at following systems, processes and administration in general.

So if you were your client, what would your advice be for your strategic marketing plan?

First - Have a goal right? Right. What is the goal of your marketing plan? Is it brand equity? Make the phone ring? Develop a community? (A la Tribes) Or to become a household name in your area?

Second - Work out who you are trying to reach. Do you work for businesses? The public? Both? Neither? (Maybe governments)

Where do they hang out? What do they read, listen to, watch? How can you get your name and brand into their world?

Third - How can you reach them? And if the previous questions weren't daunting enough for you, this one is a real hard one.

Unless you are totally new to consulting, marketing and the world of business you will be well aware that the internet has changed absolutely everything. So where does that leave you?

Okay... enough annoying questions. The strategic marketing plan for my personal brand is as follows:

Goal: To develop enough trust based relationships to move the world.

Method: Via regular creation of stunning content. This means thought leadership, practical and actionable advise, and providing answers to the questions burning the world of consultants out there.

Trust Based Assets: The Blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, The Newsletter and Podcasts. (Coming soon...)

The measures: Hmmm... I have set out some goals that I want to achieve.

#1 is to get the online forum fo LinkedIn to 16,000 by the end of this year.

#2 is to continue the 80% open rate for the newsletter, with an attrition rate of less than 5%. (As it is now)

#3 is to generate $150,000 this year through online sales of mentoring, books and associated items.

What is your strategic marketing plan? How does social media factor into that? Which platforms will rocket you through the next barrier and how will you ie the offline world into the online world?

There are of course a lot more questions here about business model, geography and so on... but I hope these thoughts are useful at least.

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