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How to Create a New Launch Marketing Plan

When you have a new launch marketing plan, the next step is to create marketing campaigns. That is so important. This will help launch new products or services or relaunches. It needs to be specific, timely and have a call to action at the end.

The marketing plan needs action. Creating individual marketing campaigns will do that. The campaign is the actual process from start to finish in steps. Each campaign needs to be tactical. You may want a campaign for a Facebook or Google Ad, an email sequence, or invitation to a workshop or webinar. The results should be definable. What’s your goal – new prospects, new sales, or new email subscribers?

New Launch Marketing Plan vs. Marketing Campaign

A marketing plan provides a high level strategy based on the business’s objectives over a period of time.
Your campaign should be a focused, tactical initiative to achieve a specific goal.
The campaign must have a work flow. This includes a step-by-step process. It focuses on execution and the resources needed to achieve measurable results.

How to Create a Marketing Campaign

Before you start your marketing campaign, you will want to map out the process step by step. Create a work flow. Here are some guidelines.

Purpose of the Campaign

Decide what the purpose of the campaign is. Because this will determine how you will know if you are successful. For example: number of people to a webinar, new signups to your email list, buying your new online course. You may be spending money for this campaign. So being specific is important as you want to realize the return on investment. You may learn in the process what you need to alter in the next campaign.

Know Your Target Audience

Many business owners need to fine tune their target market. Importantly, you may have more than one target market for different products or services you offer. Make sure the campaign is identifying what the customer needs. Show how your solution is best. Know where to find them – which social media platforms or specific people on your email list. Select the demographics, behaviors, or location or call to action.

Make sure your message is clear for the target market of your campaign. What are you offering that is going to make a difference to that issue?

I recently created a Facebook Campaign for someone and we ran two ads. The audience and location was the same. But there was two different call to actions. One was for a workshop the other was for a personal coaching session. Each had its own call to action and was designed for two different Avatars. One that was interested in a workshop. One that wanted one-on-one coaching.

AVATAR Workbook

If you have not defined your AVATAR as we call it, you will be shooting in the dark. You may want to use our AVATAR Workbook to get specific on who you are targeting. A good campaign to the wrong audience is a disaster. The workbook explains how to create a target market and your ideal customer. Downloading instructions are below.

Incentives

What inducement will you offer to get them to do what you want? You always need to provide some value in advance of getting them to buy or sign up. It could be a workshop, email list, paid webinar, online course, book, coaching package. You may need to create a freebie or gift. Choose a lead magnet like a PDF, a free course, a quiz, a free webinar. The value shows your authority and understanding of the issue of your avatar.

Communicating Your Campaign

What medium will you use to get the word out on your campaign. Once you know your target market, you can select the social media platform they hang out on. Where are they, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or YouTube? Or are you targeting them on Google? If you are selecting people in your email list, you can target by location or other tags that you have set up. Is your purpose to drive them to landing page or signup?

Use of a Landing Page

You should only use a landing page for your campaign. Sending them to your website is a disaster. They can get derailed or too many clicks. Your landing page will be specific to the offer you are making. Everything they need to know about your offer should be on the landing page and it should not be too long. We all hate long sales letters. It should show social proof, authority, and build trust. Tell them the problem, show them the solution, how you help, lead them to the call to action.

Many email platforms have built in landing pages to help you with that. We use WordPress and they also have landing pages. But the choice is yours. Pick one. Don’t send them to your website. If you want them buy something, you can link it to your Buy button. Make it easy for them to understand and buy.

Patience – Schmooze Your Prospect

It takes time for someone to buy. They probably won’t buy first time they see what you are offering. So, create an email sequence that will drip on them until they are comfortable to buy. We call that nurturing. You are slowly showing them how your offer will help their lives. Sometimes people need to hear it a few times in different ways. An automated email sequence will be critical to that nurturing.

Analysis After Campaign

Once the campaign is complete, go through your process and see what went well and where you could have improved. Did you meet your goals?

Do you need to improve your target audience? Did you use the right interests, right geography, right content, or even alluring graphics?

Do you need a better scripted landing page? Did you buy ads for the right amount of time?

Use that knowledge for your next campaign.

Each marketing campaign must be crafted carefully to get the results you need.

I hope this article has been helpful. It will help you turn your marketing plan into a new launch marketing plan. You can plan your next marketing campaign. Each campaign you launch will foster part of your marketing plan. So you get the results you want.

AVATAR WORKBOOK – Complimentary

AVATAR Workbook

Feel you need a little help defining your Avatar. Do you want to know the difference between your Target Market and Avatar? Then you will benefit by our AVATAR workbook. You may have more than one Avatar and you need to list them for each campaign. We made our workbook easy to use, it is editable so no printing required.

It’s absolutely free. So all you have to do is click here for the AVATAR Workbook.

By Janet Elie

Internet Marketing Specialist

Launch4Life

janet@launch4life.com

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Your Marketing Action Plan

Do you have a MAP – a Marketing Action Plan? If you are like most small business owners, chances are you don’t. You might have drafted up a formal business plan when your business was born. Then again, you might be like the rest of us that started our businesses by “winging it.”

So many businesses begin as a result of a great idea. You see a need for the product or service you offer. So you build a nice website, create some social media accounts, and wait for customers to show up and buy. Instead of hearing the cha-ching of the cash register, we’re serenaded with crickets. Yep, no website visitors.

Or you have lots of customers, but they’re for the wrong product or service. While you’d rather they buy your big ticket items, they’d rather buy what you’d rather not sell.

Alice in Wonderland wondering which road to take

Alice in Wonderland – Walt Disney

Which Way Should I Go?

They say that if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get your there.

That’s true with the way we run our businesses. If want to get to a specific destination, we have to be on the right road. And, if we want to ensure we are heading in the right direction – we need a MAP. A Marketing Action Plan.

If you want to get from one destination to the next, you need a plan. Better yet, you need a map. With a map, you can see where you are now and where you want to be.

What is a Marketing Action Plan?

A Marketing Action Plan is a holistic way to market your business. Many business owners do not take the time to look at the big picture first. Instead, they do bits and pieces that don’t always connect. You should zoom out first and look at the entire roadmap.

A marketing roadmap helps you create a strategy that works best for you. It takes into account your vision, goals, budget, and time. Because it includes all the parts of your marketing plan, it helps you stay focused.

Anytime you feel confused with where you are in your marketing journey, pull over. A quick glance at your MAP might be all you need to get back on track. When you know where you are, you’re in a better position to know where you’re heading.

Marketing Action Plan – Examples

Marketing roadmaps are flexible. They can be simple or complex. They can include several destinations along the way, or only a few. Here’s some of the typical destinations:

• Website

• Social Media

• Email Marketing

• Advertising

• Search Engine Optimization

However, I see them more like stepping stones to help you reach your ultimate destination. Your final destination should be the vision you have of what success will look like for you.

At Launch4Life our ultimate goal is to be able work from the road. Our ideal workspace is location independence. Which is why our motto is “have laptop will travel.” When we keep our ultimate goal in the forefront, we find it’s easier to make a decision. Each time we come to a fork in the road we ask “Will this allow or prevent us from traveling?” We only take action on the business decisions that support our ultimate destination.

Creating Your Marketing Action Plan

Start out by taking some time out to think of what you want. Think about where you want to be in your business this time next year, or even better, five years from now. This is more than thinking about how much money you want to be making. Instead, it’s more about how you want to be making it.

For instance, imagine you’re a life coach with a somewhat steady stream of online. But, you’ve grown tired of meeting clients every day via Skype. You yearn for the day that you could spend an afternoon doing art, going for a hike, or reading a novel.

That life coach needs a vision of what they could do to create passive income. They might get more bang for their buck by offering group coaching. Writing a self-help book. Or creating an online course.

Passive income would be their vision. What they’d need next would be the road map to get them there. That’s where a Marketing Action Plan comes in.

Your Marketing Action Plan should include:

· What specific actions need to occur to reach your vision?

· Who on your team will carry out each of these actions?

· When do these actions need to happen?

· What resources do you need to carry out these actions?

Once you have all that figured out, you will see that all those stepping stones fit together to create a path. This is your MAP – Marketing Action Map.

Now all you have to do is keep moving along following the MAP – one step at a time. Even if the steps are small, as long as you keep moving forward you will be making progress towards your vision.

The End Result

When you have a vision, you will always know where you’re going. Armed with a Marketing Action Map you will have the means to get where you want to be.

The greatest part of having a Marketing Action Plan is how it will empower you. You will be more in charge of your daily activities. You will stop feeling so overwhelmed about both your present and your future. Your marketing efforts will be in manageable baby steps. As you move from step to step, you will be on track to reach your final destination.

By Gillian Whitney

Communications Consultant

Launch4Life

gillian@launch4life.com

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Buyer Coachable Ingredients

They say when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. One assumes that the student arrives like a Jedi student submitting to the learning of his or her Yoda, being Ready, Willing, and Able. But is that true? Are they truly ready, willing and able?

For Yoda to be a successful coach, his student must be coachable in every way. Meaning they must have their equipment, their desire and passion. A mindset to set everything else aside to learn that one kernel of truth that will make them be a Jedi master of their fate. Truly coachable.

If you are the Yoda, is your student aka buyer ready, willing, and able to be coached in what they have sought from you? In Yoda’s infamous words “Do or do not, there is no try“. All three ingredients are needed for a winning combination. It won’t be fair to your customer or to you otherwise. Let me explain THE BUYER COACHABLE INGREDIENTS.

READY

It must be at the appropriate “time” in your customer’s business or personal life that your product is meant for them. They must have the money. Your product must be appropriate for their needs.

WILLING

They must be committed to take what they will get from you and apply to their business or personal life. This might be the skills or techniques they will learn. It may be hard, but they have to have the persistence, dedication to focus on the end goal. As Yoda would say “Do or do not, there is no try”.

ABLE

This is more of about capability. Your buyer has all of the tools available to execute what they have learned. This may be equipment, tools, time or money.

Let me give you a couple of examples of how I would apply this to my customer. With that insight you will be able to see how this would apply to your client. Are they ready, willing, and able – coachable?

Helping your students to be coachable using the FORCE.

Coachable Stories

Story #1

Susie came to me and wanted me to teach her how to create Facebook ads. Susie was READY to spend the money on my coaching and the cost of Facebook ads. When I looked into her process, there were two issues. #1 she hadn’t set up a Facebook Business Page. Without it, she couldn’t purchase Ads. #2 her call to action was classes at a physical location. I found out that the physical location was temporary. I recommended she wait for my help until she had built the Facebook Page and had locked down a more permanent location for the classes. It was putting the cart before the horse. Susie was wasn’t READY, was WILLING, but not ABLE.

Story #2

John asked why he was not getting conversions from his website to sales. He had been spending a ton of money on Facebook Ads. But no results. Why no sales. I took a look at his website. It was not ready. The ecommerce was set correctly however he was missing key components to get people to know, like and trust him. The blog page had no articles. The social media buttons were not clickable. You could not tell from his website who is “avatar – ideal customer” was. If you signed up for his email list, your email went into cyberspace because he had not set up an email program. Why would I buy John’s stuff? This guy was not Ready, was Willing, but not Able.

Story #3

Paul asked me to help him with a marketing strategy. When I laid out the guidelines to accomplish the goals, Paul couldn’t execute. There was always an excuse. Not enough time. Don’t understand. Or what I heard a lot was “I can’t”. Paul was not ready, nor willing, but able. But the able wasn’t big enough. The willingness to adapt, change, wasn’t strong enough.

Help your students with their coachable buyer ingredients – Ready, Willing, and Able

I love going to see Star Wars Movies. I learn from each movie the dynamics between the Jedi Masters and the students, whether of the FORCE or the “dark side”. As in my three stories illustrated above, these are painful experiences for both the Yoda master and the Jedi student. The student can think they are ready, willing, and able. But for the master to be successful in their coaching, the student must be coachable in all three. Some are physical things to be changed. Some require a paradigm shift in their mind. Make sure your clients have the three buyer coachable ingredients before you embark on your buying/selling relationship. May your light saber coaching make the difference.