Episode 99: Creating a marketing plan with Heidi Thompson

How many of you guys have a physical, laid out marketing plan? How many of you even really know what that would/should look like?? Julie & Kate are both guilty of this… we know what a marketing plan IS of course, but actually writing it out & figuring out all the working parts of it is such a hard task to tackle! It can be overwhelming for sure. Luckily, we have Heidi Thompson of Evolve Your Wedding Business on the show today & she’s chatting with us all about how to create an overwhelm-smashing marketing plan!

We’ve broken down her episode into 5 easy steps… you’ll of course have to listen to learn about these in more detail, but this should be a good start!

1. Set your goal: Start with a yearly goal; this could be something like a dollar figure you want to make this year or a client count you want to hit, or it can be more specific along the lines of “I want to blog 100 times next year.” Whatever your larger goal is, your next step is to break it down into 90 day increments. This ensures you’re staying on top of things each quarter, and makes your goal seem a little less overwhelming & a lot more manageable!
2. Research: Figure out who your ideal client is by looking at your past clients. Who did you connect with the most and why? What do they value, what do they fear? Where do they shop & what type of ads do those shops put out? Don’t be afraid to reach out to them and ask for help! This will help you niche down your business & attract more of you target client.
3. Messaging: Why should your client trust you? What makes you stand out from the rest of the crowd? Figure out what kind of messaging you’re putting out to the world & tweak it to be exactly what you want to say.
4. THE HOW: This is where we really get into the 90 day plan. Break down that 90 day goal even further into monthly, weekly, and even daily tasks. Figure out HOW you’re going to accomplish that goal by figuring out what you need to be doing on a regular basis to tend to it. Writing a big goal & just leaving it there isn’t going to get anything accomplished, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. By breaking this goal down even further, you avoid burning out & feeling like your goal is unattainable.
5. Meauring: How are you going to measure your progress? What metrics are you going to use to measure how you goal is coming along? This includes things like using Google Analytics to track where your traffic is coming from, keeping track of your Instagram followers, search terms people are using to find you, etc. You have to have a set way to track your progress throughout the year so you don’t lose sight of your goal!