Do you have a business M.A.P.? Wondering what a business M.A.P. is, and why you would need one?
It’s a Marketing Action Plan (M.A.P.), and you need one in order to take your business from one place to the next.
When you need to go somewhere, and you are not sure how to get there, you need directions. You can use a map to get the directions, now a days that map is within your GPS either in your smartphone or in your car. Well just like the map in your GPS, you need a M.A.P. for your business that is designed to take your business from point A to point B. The destination may be different for each business, but the need to have a plan and take action is always necessary to get your business from point A to point B.
Similar to when you are following the directions in your GPS, you may at times need to make a u-turn or change routes, but the overall map in the GPS is there to guide you and get you to your final destination. In fact, after we have made several miss steps or u-turns we love when we hear the words, “you have reached your destination“. With a business MAP, you may not hear a GPS system say, “you have reached your destination”, but you know you have reached your destination when you achieve the business goal that you set out to achieve.
For example, if your business goal is to increase your sales by 20%, you need to create a M.A.P. on how to get there. Instead of turns on highways and streets, the M.A.P. includes turns you can make in your marketing activity that can help you to reach your destination, so in the case of increasing sales, a M.A.P. could look something like this:
Point A- Sales are 50 units a month
Step 1- Increase leads by doing the following actions:
a. Attending more networking events
b. Placing ads on Social Media
c. Creating an email campaign
d. Creating an AdWord campaign
Step 2- Increase referrals by doing the following actions:
a. Joining a referral networking group
b. Looking for referral partners
c. Creating a referral partner program
d. Having a referral incentive
Step 3- Increase sales conversations by doing the following actions:
a. Having monthly webinars
b. Having monthly teleseminars
c. Having monthly in-person events
d. Having more one-on-one meetings with prospects
Step 4- Increase your conversion rate by doing the following actions:
a. Creating sales pages with good content and strong calls to actions
b. Creating emails with good content and strong call to actions
c. Creating videos with good content and strong call to actions
d. Adding testimonials to your website and sales pages
Point B- Measure the increase in sales
So as you can see the action that you take in your marketing action plan will determine the outcome of the destination of your business. You can create a plan for each business goal that you have and make adjustments to the actions when necessary.
Have you created your business M.A.P.? If so, what marketing activities do you include in order to reach your goals?
