Why Traditional Marketing Planning Fails

There is a chapter in Marketing Your Services: For People Who Hate to Sell on marketing planning. In addition to discussing overall marketing planning, in that chapter I focus most of the attention on simple mini-marketing plans. These are brief plans focused on one specific marketing tactic.

An overall marketing plan can be constructed by combining a series of mini-plans. If you are responsible for putting together a complete marketing plan, it is often easiest to go with a "traditional" approach. Unfortunately, the traditional approach is seldom the most effective or most cost effective.

To help you see the difference between an effective non-traditional overall plan and the less effective traditional plan, I discuss them below.

A Traditional Implementation Plan

The mini-plans in a traditional marketing plan might look like this:

1. Create a brochure. (See Chapter 5.)
2. Advertise in places your prospects read. (See Chapter 4.)
3. Write letters to big companies (Chapter 5) and follow through with phone calls (Chapter 9).
4. Give a talk at an industry conference. (See Chapter 11.)
5. Hire a marketing consultant.

This approach is traditional in two different ways. First, it focuses on activities that are easy to do and cost money. Even worse, it is the type of plan that any non-service, product-oriented company might do when they had a marketing budget and directed a general marketing assistant to "do something."

Second, it is the same approach that any of your competitors might take. It doesn't set you apart in any way or take advantage of your unique personality and strengths.

Other reasons I don't particularly like this plan include:

1. You can spend a good bit of money on brochures and advertising without getting much response.
2. If you don't have an effective marketing program now, you won't know how to do effective brochures and advertising.
3. Approaching big companies is a long-term process. It can take you a year to find out whether it will work or not.
4. Getting to speak at an industry conference will usually take at least a year. Instead, start to speak at local groups of your customers. This will also give you more direct contact with people who could use your services.
5. There is little direct relationship-building with prospects or customers in this plan.

A Less Traditional Plan

A less traditional, relationship-oriented, less expensive plan might look like this:

1. Create a one-page quarterly newsletter or ezine to send out to prospects, past clients, and current clients.
2. Send five personal letters a week to new prospects. (See Chapter 5.)
3. Talk to your best clients or prospects about their needs.
4. Ask your best clients or friends for referrals.
5. Increase your "specialization." Become the expert in a certain problem or for a specific group.
6. Make 10 follow-up phone calls a week to people whom you've written, or met networking, or whom you have worked for in the past. (See Chapter 8.)
7. Start working now on getting publicity in your local paper or trade publications. (See Chapter 7.)
8. Begin doing research on a possible new service to offer, or type of client to approach. (You can also get publicity from this. See Chapter 7.)
9. Call other service providers who serve your clients and could be referral sources for you. (See Chapter 14.)
10. Arrange links to your web site from referral source sites. (See Chapter 12.)

In contrast to the traditional plan, you can see that the ten points above focus on building or extending relationships. They are low cost and allow you to get to know your market. They highlight your individuality for that market. This distinguishes you from your competition.

This article is based on the expanded edition of Marketing Your Services: For People Who Hate to Sell.