50: Annual Marketing Planning, the Tiny way.

Ready to make your annual marketing plan not only manageable but also incredibly effective?

Join me, Sarah Noel Block, as I take you through the fantastic journey of understanding the various stages of your customer experiences - from awareness to retention. Let’s tackle the emotions, questions, and pain points that your customers encounter and identify how to enhance their journey.

Together, we’ll set achievable SMART goals and tie them to Key Performance Indicators to ensure your progress is trackable and your marketing plan effective.

We’ll also examine the power of breaking down annual goals into quarterly strategies and tactics, creating a more digestible and less overwhelming approach to your marketing plan.

You'll also get a sneak peek into my exclusive quarterly marketing plan template to further aid your planning process.

Towards the end, I have an exciting offer lined up for you - a chance to work with me in a 2024 marketing planning session.

Are you set to smash those revenue targets and make your marketing plan a resounding success?

Then let’s get started!

Quarterly marketing plan.

Annual Planning Session

Discount: PODCAST95

Website: https://www.sarahnoelblock.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahnoelblock/
Newsletter: https://tinymarketing.me/newsletter
Tiny Marketing Community

Click here to ask a question about the episode

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hello, before we start today's episode, can we just celebrate? This is episode 50 of the Tiny Marketing Show. To celebrate, please, please, please, please, head on over to wherever you listen to podcasts Well, you're already there because you're listening to this and rate and review the Tiny Marketing Show so we can shoot for another 50. Celebrate with me, people. Mwah Now my very best NPR voice. Let's get back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Speaker 1: 0:45

A lot of you watching this or listening to this today are solo entrepreneurs or part of a small marketing department. And here's the issue you are so busy getting shit done that you don't have the time to plan it. You don't have the time to do annual planning, you don't have the time to sit down into a strategy, and then it gets confusing. Think of it like a spider web. It's spider web upon spider web and what happens is it just ends up being a big mess rather than a planned strategic place for your flies to land metaphor. But I'm here for it. So today I'm talking about annual planning and how you can do it. With a no person marketing department or really small marketing department, annual planning is possible and it will give you a North Star for moving forward and getting your marketing ready for 2024.

Speaker 1: 1:58

I'm Sarah Nwoblak and this is Tiny Marketing. First things first. When it comes to anything tiny marketing, we start with the customer avatar. So when you are planning your annual plan for marketing, you want to start with your customer and their journey. So let's talk about what you should include within your customer journey Before we dig too deep into the customer journey. Head over to episode 48, where we talked about creating your target customer avatar, because that will help you develop the avatar and then you take the next step of creating the customer journey. So pause, go to episode 48, create that target avatar and then come back here to what Two minutes into this episode, and we'll do the customer journey. Okay, back to the customer journey.

Speaker 1: 2:57

So the sales cycle goes awareness, consideration, decision retention. Awareness is the stage where the ideal customer is discovering that you exist in the first place. So this might be social media, it might be a guest appearance on someone's podcast. They're discovering you exist. They're discovering that a solution to their problem could potentially exist. Next is consideration. So, with consideration, they have decided that you are a potential solution to their problem. So, as they're compiling a list of potential service providers or product providers for their problem. You're on the list. That's the consideration stage. Decision so they have their shortlist. You've made the cut. Next up is cutting the list down and making a choice and identifying that one person they're going to go with. All right. So that's decision stage. And then last is retention and that's keeping those customers once they've decided to work with you, all right.

Speaker 1: 4:09

So now that we've talked about the sales cycle, next up is their journey for each one of those stages. So first is their goals. Are their goals? What goals do they have at each stage? What touch points do they go to? So I'm going to give you some examples. So their goal at awareness might be to see if there is a solution to their problem, because there's potentially the case where they have a problem and there is no solution and it's do nothing is a solution. Get over, it is a solution. Or it could be onboard, a new tech piece to automate something. So that's what their goal is see if there's a solution to my problem.

Speaker 1: 5:00

And then touch points is another thing that you want to look at on the customer journey when are they going for information at each one of those stages? So this I'm going to dig into slightly deeper With touch points. At awareness, it's usually social media. It could be Google, it could be podcasts. They're searching around for solutions to their problem, so it's more high level places that they're going to look, whereas at consideration, a touch point might be your sales page.

Speaker 1: 5:33

At decision, it could be frequently asked questions and maybe discovery call. They're having a conversation with you. At retention, it's the experience that they're having with you are the touch points. Are you communicative with them throughout the process? Are you providing a great experience that makes them want to continue working with you? Okay, next emotions. What emotions are they feeling at each stage of the sales cycle? Any questions that they might have at each stage, pain points that they're struggling with at each stage, and then, what improvement opportunities do you have to make the experience between your potential customer and you better at each one of those stages? So some examples of that might be an improvement opportunity at awareness might be changing channels. Maybe you're hanging out on a channel that your target audience is not hanging out on and you could provide a better experience if you switch to LinkedIn from Instagram, for example.

Speaker 1: 6:42

We're an improvement opportunity at decision, for example, could be to create a lead product. That would move them from the fit call to your actual packages in a smoother way. Help them understand how you can solve the problem better. So that's an opportunity for improvement. Consideration when they're trying to decide who is the right solution. Maybe opportunity for improvement could be looking at your sales page. Are you responding to all of their potential objections on the sales page? So you're anticipating their needs before they have to voice them. That's an opportunity for improvement. All right, so we start there. And before I forget, in the show notes I am sharing my quarterly marketing plan template that you can download. So head to the show notes to grab that and it has all of these stages and all of the journey points. Okay, so we start with the customer journey and that gives us a streamlined approach for moving forward.

Speaker 1: 8:00

Next up is annual goal setting. So with annual goal setting, you want to choose a revenue target as an example could be other things. You want to choose a revenue target that you want to reach for 2024. And make sure that all goals that you put down for your annual planning are smart goals. That means they are specific, they are measurable, they are achievable, relevant in time. Bound. So revenue goals is one example it could be to scale you want to bring on more people so you could support more customers. It could be to cut down on your operational. Make your operations more efficient. So you might want a goal of sitting down, looking at your core offer and seeing how you can optimize it the best way possible.

Speaker 1: 9:01

Okay so some examples of annual goals and then align those goals with your business's mission and vision. Where do you want to see your business go in the future? Make sure that your goals align with that and then connect these goals with KPIs key performance indicators. If something is heading in the right direction or falling down, a terrible trap Makes it a lot easier. So some key performance indicators or KPIs that you want to look at. For revenue is it could be looking at QuickBooks and making sure that you're hitting certain numbers every month would be a good one. Or if it's operational efficiencies that you're looking at, it could be tracking your projects along each task takes and seeing where you can cut down on time. What would make this more efficient? Or breaking down your projects into tasks and seeing what isn't really moving the needle, what doesn't really matter for the customer or doesn't make that project any better. You could just cut those things. A lot of times we do things because we've always done them that way, but that doesn't mean they need to always stay that way. Those are just some ways that you can set KPIs to move yourself forward towards those annual goals.

Speaker 1: 10:37

Next up are quarterly strategies and tactics. Mama loves bite-sized marketing and you can go over to Episode 49, the last episode, to learn a little bit more about bite-sized marketing. But I think it's important to make everything really achievable. A lot of times we put so much pressure on ourselves to do all the things, but we don't need to or think so far ahead like our five-year goal. Don't put that much pressure on yourself. Think quarter by quarter. It gets a lot easier when you break it down by, like just the next 90 days. What do the next 90 days look like?

Speaker 1: 11:19

But the reason we're talking annual planning today is because you want to have those big goals that you're moving towards each quarter. But so start with that, start with those annual goals. What do you want to achieve by the end of the year? But you got to break it down quarterly or it's going to just get too big and overwhelming and feel just icky. So we're going to be breaking it down by quarter.

Speaker 1: 11:46

Okay, so once you've identified your annual goals, it's time to break it down by quarter quarterly strategies and tactics. So once again, I'm going to reference your quarterly marketing plan. That's in the show notes page. Make sure to download it so you can follow along with me. But what you want to do is take those big annual goals and then break it down to what goals do you want to achieve within the next 90 days? We have a spreadsheet there and it's a couple let's say five goals that you want to achieve that quarter, and one of them should be how much money do you need to bring in that quarter to reach that annual revenue goal? What strategies are you going to approach to reach those goals? Now, don't feel pressure to create different strategies every quarter, because maybe the strategy that worked in Q1 is going to work in Q2. You just have to tweak it and optimize it, but we'll get into that later.

Speaker 1: 12:54

Break down your big goals into little goals by quarter and then identify what strategies you're going to use to tackle those goals that quarter, just the 90 days. Then, what KPIs are you going to track to see if you're successful in those strategies. How much will each of those strategies cost? And last, how much revenue do you expect to gain from those strategies? So I'm going to give you an example of what this could look like. All right, let's say your goal is to make a million for the year and you need to break it down by quarter. So your revenue goal for Q1 is 250,000.

Speaker 1: 13:39

Let's say you have an approach to you're going to be doing one workshop a month. You're doing it in person and you are using Meetups, eventbrite and LinkedIn to promote that workshop. Let's say it's live, in person, and it's at the local co-working space. All right, so there you go. You have your goal and you have a strategy. You're going to do three workshops. They're going to be live. You have your promotional strategies around it.

Speaker 1: 14:23

Next, we need to decide what your KPIs are going to be. So you need to know your numbers on this. What percentage of workshop attendees tend to move forward with purchasing your offer and what is the cost of your core offer? What percentage of people who RSVP for the workshop attend live? Those are some things that you'll want to know ahead of time For the sake of this podcast. Instead of using actual numbers, we're going to use averages. So, on average, 30% of people who sign up for an event attend live, so we'll use that as the number. And, on average, about 5% of people you're trying to sell to convert. So we'll use those numbers to help you with this.

Speaker 1: 15:19

Let's say, those are your averages as well, so those would be your key performance indicators. That means that you know exactly how many people you want to RSVP for that event in order to reach those goals. So you're doing three events and you need to hit $250,000 this quarter. So I'm going to pause here so I can do the math. Okay, so I just went to chatGPT, so I had chatGPT do the math for me and this was my prompt. How many people do I need to RSVP for my event if I want to make $250,000 from a $15,000 offer and 30% show up live and 5% of the people who show up live convert to buying that offer? All right, so that's my prompt and what it tells me is that 56 people need to attend live and that means 187 people need to RSVP. Now that's over three events, because we're doing one workshop a month. So we're going to divide that by three. So we need 62 people, or 62.22. So, let's say, 63 people to RSVP to each of those events in order to reach our $250,000 a quarter revenue goal. All right, so now we can input that information into our KPIs on our planning worksheet Easy peasy, we know what we need to hit. Now you can just keep track of this as you're advertising it through LinkedIn, meetup for this example, etc. Hey, maybe I need to spend a little bit money and boost in order to get to my goal of 63 people RSVPing for this event, but benchmarks like 30% 5% give you a good placeholder for you to do the math on reaching those goals.

Speaker 1: 17:23

Next, you want to look at cost. How much will these three workshops cost me? So for this, you might have to rent office space in the co-working space. You might need to spend a little add dollars to boost the event. If you're not reaching your goals organically, it's going to cost you some time. You need to actually put together these workshops. You need to make sure they're value driven and that they lead to your offer. So add up all of that and put that into the cost. And then, last, you want to put in how much revenue you expect to make from this strategy, and for this it would be $250,000. So that's just an example you can use.

Speaker 1: 18:05

But maybe your strategies are guest podcasting or it could be email marketing. Look at the strategies that work for you and include those in your quarterly planning. Next up is reviewing your analytics from your previous goals. So, as you're planning for the next quarter, I said at the top of this podcast, you don't need to start from scratch. If you have strategies that are killing it and working, you can move those on and continue those strategies for the next quarter. But you don't know they're working until you review them. So look back on your previous goals and this is part of the worksheet also and look at the analytics and track them. Are you? What is the percentage that is actually attending live on those workshops? As an example, how much revenue are you making? How many people are actually closing? Look at your real numbers so you can apply them moving forward, so you become more accurate the longer you do this. But review those analytics and track them. Put them in the worksheet so that what is working and what's not working, next optimize those tactics and strategies. You've looked at the analytics. You know what's working for you and what's not working for you.

Speaker 1: 19:26

Don't be afraid to cut. There's this thing called loss aversion. When we spend time and money doing a thing, we become less likely to cut that thing because we've already invested time and money into it. But you end up losing more time and money if you continue doing something that doesn't work for you. So don't be afraid to cut. Look and cut strategically what isn't working and feel comfortable experimenting with something new. So add something that you feel might work. Just try one each quarter. I like to call it the marketing lab. Put one experiment in the marketing lab that you're willing to try for that next quarter and see if maybe that's the surprise thing that's going to work, that's going to move the needle for your business. You never know.

Speaker 1: 20:16

This podcast started off that way. I started my live stream on a whim, just like I'd like to meet people within my community. So I'm going to interview smart people on a live stream. And then one day I was like let's experiment and see how this does in a podcast format and guess what it did better. But if I didn't experiment, if I was afraid to try something new, I would have never known that. So don't be afraid to cut and experiment.

Speaker 1: 20:46

The last thing I am digging into today is my offer Annual planning with me, one-on-one, private, where we will spend 60 to 90 minutes doing your annual planning together and identifying what you're going to do in the next 90 days to move the needle.

Speaker 1: 21:06

Wouldn't it feel good to have someone on your side helping you walk through this, planning out your year and identifying what makes sense to do in the next 90 days to reach those revenue goals, those optimizing goals, those scaling goals?

Speaker 1: 21:26

You can do that with me. I have four slots left for the rest of this year before we close up, and it's all for 2024 marketing planning. You can go to the show notes and sign up for that. It is only $9.95 and if you use the code podcast 95, you get $95 off. So it's 900 flat for a 60 to 90 minute session with me where we will identify your annual goals and we will plan out your first 90 days for 2024 to help you reach those goals. It's going to kill it. You're going to be amazing and I can't wait to spend some one-on-one time with you and discover how you can reach those revenue goals, because you can. You're going to kill it. So head down to the show notes page, utilize that coupon code and let's make you some money for next year. All right, I will see you next time and thank you.