Develop a lucrative reputation in your industry in just one year... with the no-fluff, no-jargon, no-MBA-required, month-by-month annual marketing plan

Why an annual marketing plan?

By the seat of your pants, you’ve reached a certain level of success and you wonder how much more you can achieve with a systematic plan and new tactics you’ve never tried.

Or you want to change directions with the shortest possible time till you can enjoy big results.

Or you see technological changes or economic challenges heading your way and you want get prepared to survive.

Becoming a star in your field, attracting more or different clients and increasing sales can all become reality when you know what to do, when to do it and how.  If you’re ready for growth, it may be time to get help from someone with experience in reputation building and creative outreach to current and new markets—me!

My Reputation Plan gives you a completely customized, month-by-month schedule of marketing activities tailored specifically to your objectives, your target audiences, your preferences and your strengths.  With this strategic yet concrete marketing plan, you can stop depending on the habits that have taken you only so far and can avoid stumbling into misguided attempts at improving your yield of new customers, clients and business opportunities.  Instead, by following the plan, you do the right things at the right time in the right way.

Marketing plans aren’t all alike.

If you haven’t already searched the Internet for “annual marketing plans” or “sample marketing plans,” let me tell you what you’ll find.  With rare exceptions, the sample marketing plans, services and software you’ll find are crafted by steeped-in-jargon MBAs who want to analyze and rehash what you already know before recommending anything.  And when it comes to what exactly you should do to achieve the results you want, you find standard, general marketing advice in these plans, not creative, original ideas brilliantly suited to your objectives.

That’s why my clients are excited about the reputation-building plans I’ve delivered to them.  With no fluff, no boilerplate, no graphs or dissertations that belabor the obvious and the obscure, they receive fresh ideas systematically explained and then organized in a monthly schedule of specific actions steps.

If you need a marketing plan as part of a search for funding or financing, the Reputation Plan is not for you.  If you feel comfortable with long passages of mumbo jumbo about the “macroenvironment,” your “contribution margin” and “strategy pyramids” (these words come from a site selling marketing plan software), then there are plenty of business-school graduates out there who would be delighted to help you for about $5,000.  But if you want an action plan you can readily understand and immediately begin executing for a little more than half of that, you’ve reached the right page. 

Some typical purposes fulfilled by this no-theory, all-action plan

Clients commissioning a Reputation Plan have had the following goals, among others:

• Develop a new stream of income through consulting for and selling how-to products to industry peers

• Restart the business after having taken two years off and having lost most prior clients and contacts

• Turn a solid but relatively undifferentiated industry reputation into star status

• Create a better system for leads from the public and a referral network from professionals in related fields

• Grow the web side of the business, thereby becoming less geared to local clients

• Triple product sales by becoming the vendor everyone in the industry has heard of

• Attract new clients in expanding industries so as to become less dependent upon a few long-term clients and personal referrals

• Create a "back end" of additional high-profit products to sell to a growing list of past customers

Clients get results from strategy made concrete.

Recommended marketing tactics have included month-by-month scheduled activities such as these:

• Telephone survey of potential clients’ views on a newsworthy question, with the results publicized in news releases, white papers and briefings for the survey participants

• Systematic instructions for compiling a list of appropriate media targets and distributing company news so that it reaches target markets

• Creation of an award program that shines a monthly spotlight on the values exemplified in a company’s product

• Sorting of direct mail, publicity and advertising into the proper sequence for a new-product launch

• Different kinds of postcards to be sent to current clientele, gatekeepers, new customers, media people and referral sources

• Revisions of Web sites to better attract visitors and persuade them to consent to future contacts

• Certain activities repeated every month, with others revisited quarterly or semi-annually, all specified explicitly on the easy-to-follow monthly schedule

See a sample marketing plan I created for myself to increase results from my Web site.

It's created from scratch and uniquely slanted to your preferences.

Some people would rather end up in the poorhouse than make cold calls.  Others relish talking to strangers but don’t feel comfortable with mailings.  When you order up your customized annual marketing plan, you provide a few basic facts about your business, your Web address and whatever printed materials would help orient me to your products or services and your business approach.  Then I create a set of questions for you to answer, preferably by email, or by phone if you prefer.  Your answers might prompt follow-up questions, again designed to elicit data relevant to your one-of-a-kind marketing plan.

You might expect this personal service from a top marketing expert to cost thousands of dollars.  (I’m the author of five marketing books, including 6 Steps to Free Publicity and Persuading on Paper, and a columnist for many prominent magazines and web sites.)  But the Reputation Plan costs just $2,995, charged half in advance and the other half when you receive the completed plan and say you’re satisfied with it.  If you have any concerns upon looking it over, I tinker with it until you feel it’s something to which you can commit your energy and resources. 

You might be able to create a plan on your own—but would you?

Unlike, say, legal negotiations or arthroscopic surgery, an annual marketing plan involves some ingredients you can probably assemble on your own, particularly if you’ve been in business for a while and have done reasonably well.  But bringing in a talented outsider who understands the process of achieving visibility has many advantages:

• An outsider has the objectivity to see marketing opportunities and suggest marketing vehicles that you’ve never considered.  Clients for the Reputation Plan have even included other marketing experts, who ably create marketing plans for others but can’t apply what they know to themselves.  
  
• With careful, systematic thinking, I ensure that steps occur in the proper sequence and the appropriate frequency, enabling everything you do to build upon everything else.

• I make certain that your plan includes the steps that make it possible for you to cash in on your developing reputation.  When people become well-known without having laid the necessary groundwork, their fame may not bring the expected payoff.
  
• Although this isn’t the point of the marketing plan, often in looking over your marketing materials I can show you mistakes and infelicities that you may have been blind to, such as poor wording, inconsistencies between image and pricing or outdated approaches.

See excerpts from the plan I created for myself.

Don’t delay—act today!

If you’ve read this far, you undoubtedly understand the value of a systematic yet creative plan to increase your visibility and attract more business.  Don’t wait until circumstances force you to act.  In that case, your efforts may take longer to catch hold and pull you back from the brink.

When the economy was growing like gangbusters, I gave a half-day marketing seminar to members of the Rhode Island Builders Association.  I was impressed that so many had taken time away from their businesses when construction and renovation were booming, and I asked why they’d come to learn more about marketing.  The consensus:  They knew they had to take steps then to weather the economic slowdown that would inevitably come around sometime in the future.  Smart!

So e-mail me today that you’d like to commission a Reputation Plan that will guide you step-by-step to fame and fortune in a year.  Reassure yourself that I know what I'm doing by taking a look at my own Internet marketing plan here.  Or if you have questions about the suitability of this type of annual marketing plan for your business, ask away. You can also reach me at 1-413-582-4052.  It’s a bargain at just $2,995, with a payment plan available!