Marketing planning for 2012

It’s 2012 and many companies should be planning their marketing strategies and who the new clients that their operations will target over the course of the year. In order to properly prepare a marketing strategy however

With this in mind here’s your list of things to do at the start of this new calendar year:

• Client list: It’s time to make a list of your current and potential clients. The reason that a business does this is to re-establish which clients are the primary targets. A client list allows the right sales people to be allocated to the appropriate client and the right strategy employed. Clients should be listed in Tier 1, 2 and 3 fashion working from most desirable to market to and 3 the least. For a pre-existing client these should be Tier 1 clients as an extra dollar from a pre-existing client is generally easier to come across.
• Marketing strategy: From here it’s time to work out with each client what is the appropriate marketing strategy for each client and split your marketing group into their teams and attack their plans at depth.
• Advertising budget: Once the plans are prepared it’s time for the business’ Marketing Director to meet with the Chief Financial Officer to determine the budget that has been allocated for the marketing team for the calendar year.
• KPI’s and Targets: With the budget set, marketing strategy and appropriate clients the Marketing Director needs to set with all marketing teams their key performance indicators and targets. From here at the end of the 1st Quarter the Marketing Director will have proper benchmark to mark against and then reassess for the rest of and throughout the year.

Reading this article should inspire any organisation to prepare for marketing 2012. Best of luck with your business’ endeavours for the year!