Does that seem right? Does that mean we should be a fourth of the way toward our yearly goals? Does that mean we should have a fourth of our new clients, a fourth of our revenue, and a fourth of our leads?

Well, if you are like us and asking yourself these questions (and quite possibly more), then here is some advice: if you are NOT on track, it’s NOT to late. Here is some practical thoughts that may help you make the turn.

Do what YOU do best

With that, I don’t mean your company, I mean YOU. Do what YOU do best. If you are like most business people I know, you are all trying to be everything to everyone and do everything yourself. But that is exactly how we get off course from our goals. Stop and assess what you should be doing for your company – quite possibly they are things only you can do for the company. Focus on those things and find others to do the rest.

Oh wait, that reminds me about my next point….

Find other resources / partners to help take the load off you

Can’t afford it? I know, we say that here all the time as well. But the fact of the matter is you CAN’T afford not to. If your business model is truly as strong as you believe it is, then you have to let go of some of the things that are holding you back from reaching your goals. You have to let others do the things they can do to help your company succeed and allow you to focus on the things only you can.

Now this doesn’t necessarily mean hiring. It could mean outsourcing some work to a virtual employee or company (I know a good one when it comes to marketing), or it may mean partnering with some companies to trade services or resources. Be creative and make every dollar you spend count toward reaching your goal.

Break the goals up in manageable pieces

We see many companies only make yearly goals and the numbers they stare at each day are so large they become paralyzed. Break them up. What do you want to accomplish by this time next quarter – or maybe next time this month? Keep your eye focused on a goal that is reachable (with a stretch) within a shorter period of time.

I hope these thoughts help trigger your mind to think of other things you need to consider as well. If you have other ideas to share, add them to the post by using the comment box below.

If you are struggling with your goals, your message, or your plan. Give us a call and let’s see what we can do to help you now.

And although our monthly email newsletter is titled “Hat Trick” it is more of a play on the hockey phrase as it relates to our name than it is a “tip of the hat” to the game. To be perfectly honest, that is probably all I know about the game – except for one other thing.

The great Wayne Gretzky once said something that has become one of my favorite quotes. He said, “Don’t skate to where the puck is…skate to where the puck will be.”

I love that quote because it says so much in so little. It speaks to me personally in how I try to live my life, but also how I hope we continue to run our business. It puts a focus where it should be. It is the definition of wisdom exemplified: knowing the outcome before it will happen.

So how can we get into this mindset with our business? How can we continue to operate as we need to today, but watch and know where our “puck” will be in the future? Well, would you believe our marketing efforts can help? Here are some thoughts on how.

Plan your marketing for where you want to go, not for where you are today.

It’s hard, I know, when you are muddling in the day-to-day issues of a business to stop and plan, but that is exactly what makes the difference between a long-term, successful business and one that’s short-lived. Market to the type of client you think will help your business long-term. You can certainly “sell” to those you do business with now (and do whatever a client may ask of you), but marketing is a proactive effort – so spend your effort (and your money) on where you see your business going, not on where it is today.

Budget for where you want to go, not for where you are today.

Now this one is easier said than done, but if you have planned correctly as we stated above, then you should have the confidence to spend the money you need to to move the ball forward. I don’t mean spending large sums of money as if you are where you expect to be 10 years from now, but spend to get yourself further down the path. Times are tough, I know first hand, but now is when you can “out-skate” your competition if you know (and are confident) which direction to go.

Speak to where you want to go, not to where you are today.

In your language (both written and verbal) speak like you want your business to be – not necessarily like it is today. Start setting the groundwork now. You will find that people will instinctively pick up on what you are say about yourself – and sharing the message of where you are going will allow those around you to help get you there faster.

Much like hockey, being good at business is about thinking two steps ahead and being at the right place at the right time. Allow your marketing efforts to help you get there. And much like hockey, everyone needs a coach (even the great Wayne Gretzky), so if we can help you in any way – just give us a ring.

Correct or not, it has presented an anology that has been used in business over the years and I would like to make the point we see many businesses doing this with their marketing as well.

Here is a common conversation we have with business owners.

3hats: “So tell us what marketing activities you have done in the last 6 months.”
owner: “Well I had an ad in the local coupon pack.”
3hats: “Did it work for you? What was your goal for doing it?”
owner: “I don’t know….”
3hats: “What was your reason for doing it?”
owner: “I don’t know… I guess because my competitor did it.”

Often times business owners take actions with their marketing efforts solely based upon the actions of their competitors. Why is that wrong? Well, even though you are competitors and may offer customers similar products or services, there are many more things different between your businesses. Potentially your budget, your ideal customer, your geographic target area, your capacity, your services, your profit margin on certain products or services, your business model, your business goals, your vision, etc.

Instead, we advise companies to stick to the following for their marketing activities:

Follow your goals

Understand what you are trying to accomplish with your business (as well as your marketing) and stick to it! Set goals for yourself and determine the best ways to accomplish them in the most cost effective way. Know what your competitors are doing, but try not to let that influence the decisions you are making for your business – because as we pointed out above, you may not understand why they are making those decisions and as a result, may not be the right ones for you.

Follow your audience

Make sure you know where your ideal client is looking for the type of products and services you offer, and how they like to be communicated to – then go it ‘em. Be creative in how you reach out to them. Understand under what circumstance do they have a pain you can fix with your product or service and reach them then.

Follow your plan

Almost weekly businesses are presented with new marketing opportunities and new ways to spend their money. Develop a plan and weigh each marketing tactic against that plan. Is this the best way to spend these dollars? Do I know what I can expect as a result of spending this money? Does what I expect align with my business goals?

A little bit of thought and a little bit of discipline with your marketing can go a long way to help you reach your business goals. If you would like to discuss marketing planning or evaluate some of your marketing tactics further, please give us a call.

Marketing budgets have certainly been reduce compared to years past, but there are three other points have stuck out the most for me.

• Reduction of marketing staff
• Decrease in advertisement in traditional media
• Continued decline of newspapers

One way we serve our clients at Three Hats Marketing is by operating as their Outsourced Marketing Director / Department. We are seeing more and more companies cutting their in-house Marketing Departments and turning to outsourcing as cost-cutting tactic. While outsourcing the marketing director position or event the entire marketing department responsibilities has been around for a while, we are seeing businesses explore this route more seriously as budgets continue to contract.

In preparing the 2009 marketing plans for our clients, we were surprised by how many clients proactively approached us about reducing advertising in traditional media. The effectiveness and ROI of these tactics have always been ambiguous and difficult to measure but in general clients always “felt” it was just something they had to do. The ever-changing tides of our economy is forcing marketers and business executives to be more aggressive with measuring the effectiveness of every dollar.

It seems that every week I read or hear of another newspaper cutting staff or even closing their doors. This is occurring at a much more rapid rate that I expected. With the amount of digital media outlets, Smart Phones, Twitter, Blogs, etc, information is being digested differently than it had been even 3 years ago.

Geoff has other sound predictions and background information. Below are Geoff’s marketing predictions and the full post can be found here Seven Predictions for 2009 and we highly encourage you to read it.

Let me know your marketing and advertising predictions for 2009 and if you’ve noticed any surprising trends.

1. No doubt about it, marketers will be cutting back on advertising spending this year.

2. Among traditional media, newspapers, radio and magazines will see the worst declines.

3. Advertisers’ pull-back in overall marketing spending, coupled with a serious re-examination of traditional media, will set in motion a series of permanent changes that will affect how media is planned and measured, as well as the media mix itself.

4. Throughout all this economic shrinkage, the Internet will continue to grow, though at a far more constrained pace. eMarketer projects online ad spending will rise 8.9% in 2009, after an already ratcheted-down rate of 11.3% in 2008.

5. Despite the general consensus that online will ride out the storm, expect to see a growing contingent of bearish forecasters disparaging its prospects. Ironically, many of these doom-mongers will hail from the Internet space.

6. Growth in online display advertising will languish—but only in terms of absolute-dollar spending, and the effects will be temporary.

7. E-commerce, already hammered in 2008, will see growth slip even further, from 7.2% in 2008 to a measly 4.1% in 2009.

I recently read a post on Chief Marketer titled “Design Your Site to Meet Customers’ Needs”. It’s a quick read and I suggest you read the full blog, but below are the main points. I agree with most of the rules but also feel it fails to identify what we at Three Hats Marketing think is the most import rule: Define the Business Objectives of your Website. Without first defining how your website is going to support your business in some capacity, you are operating in the dark. I appreciate the importance of marketing you site, but without setting a stake in the ground you really have no direction. So we feel you first have to start with the defining the business objectives of your website and then define how you are going to market it.

The other point we would suggest different is to define the Key Performance Indicators of your site. What equals success? It has to be more than simply how many visitors, length of stay or pages per visit. Some would argue that this is part of defining the business objectives. I agree with that to some extent but feel it is important enough to be a rule of its own. Perhaps it would replace Denise B. Hearden’s rule #4 as I hope it goes without saying – you need someone qualified to define and design your website.

Kudos to Denise though as this is a good list of 8 Simple Rules…

1. Develop a marketing plan for your Web site.

2. While developing your Web site marketing plan, ask yourself “What is the purpose of my Web site?”

3. Understand the users of your site.

4. Make sure the strategy behind your Web site design comes from someone qualified.

5. Don’t try something new because it looks “cool.”

6. Drive traffic to your site!

7. Is your content fresh, or is it the same material you put up there when your site was first created?

8. Monitor and measure your site.

Denise B. Hearden (denise.hearden@johnsondirect.com) is the e-marketing director of Johnson Direct.

• what are the objectives?
• what is your expected ROI?
• What tactics will you implement to achieve your objectives?
• How will you measure your tactics to ensure success?

I posted this same question on the Linking Indiana group of LinkedIn and Michael Seidle asked the same question back to me. So, I thought I would blog my response…

We are launching our new marketing campaign this month to guide the growth of Three Hats Marketing. Our campaign is broken down into two primary categories – Branding/Awareness and Lead Generation. We are still a young company so our marketing focus at this point is on awareness and lead generation rather than client retention, staff recruitment or to demonstrate our community involvement. All of which we will use marketing for, but in due time.

We are utilizing social media and networking as our primary tactics to support our objectives. We are utilize tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Smaller Indiana and Facebook to increase our brand awareness and establish relationships with vendors & partners. The measurement of brand awareness is tough, but we use tools like Twitter Search, Technorati & Google Alerts to measure how many conversations we are a part of, and our total impressions on the targeted sites/communities. Additionally, we’ll measure the effectiveness of our brand awareness by the amount and level of quality with our partners and vendors relationships.

As for lead generation, we’ve found that in selling marketing consultation is all about building a relationship and trust. To accomplish this, we’ve identified 5-6 organizations we invest our time in via general attendance and board memberships. The monetary cost associated with networking is relatively low but the time commitment can be high. Keeping in mind that our time has a worth, we have expectations of how much time we invest in each group and measure that against the leads and relationships we are able to establish. Each account manager has a target for active leads and projects and we hit each month.

For Three Hats Marketing, the chase is not found in gaining the most leads/clients but rather the right ones! Our cost per sale can be high – sometimes up to 4-5k, but we are working to build long term relationships and most of our clients are repeat or have annual engagements.

To make sure we stay the course, we are measuring our primary activities monthly and performing more frequent spot checks occasionally. We have some ambitious goals this year and look forward to executing our plan to achieve them!

Have you created your marketing plan for 2009???