Marketing Your Consulting Services.pdf - epiheirimatikotita.gr

one phone call after five months. You are still committed to the last seven months
and the payments that equal another $1,750. Try to maintain as much flexibility
as possible in your plans.
Compare what you know about your budget to what you have learned about
the cost of marketing. Don’t be surprised if you have identified more activities than
you have budget. That is a typical situation. So now the difficulty comes in deciding
what to cut.
The most important message here is that you must have a budget. It is easy
to spend more than you intended. Some consultants run a couple of ads and, as
business (and budget) is acquired, they run a few more. This does not create a
reliable plan. It will be hard to determine the right mix and the right investment.
A successful business wants to find the right marketing plan—enough to ensure
the business thrives, but not so much that you waste money. A budget gives you
one of the data pieces you need to determine your return on this marketing investment.
Make informed decisions about your marketing tools based on the
cost of each.
7. Develop an Annual Marketing Planning Calendar
This is the step where it all comes together on several pages. You will lay out your
plan for the year on an annual marketing planning calendar like the one in Exhibit
6.2. Each of your goals will be broken down into substeps using the activities you
chose and listed on the calendar. Notice that this format also tracks estimated costs.
You will of course need more detail for some of the activities, but this format will
help you see everything at a glance: how time will be expended each month and
the anticipated marketing cost for the month.
Suppose that one of your marketing goals is to “have two new clients in the
banking industry by the end of the year.” In addition you have decided that you
will use mostly personal marketing tools that will include conference attendance,
presentations, referrals, and personal contacts. Your marketing activities for the
first couple of months might look something like this:
Contact my banker for ideas January 15
Speak at banking conference February 8
Your Marketing Plan: Can You Market on a Shoestring Budget? 129