July 2014 | Giant Voices

3 Deadly Strategic Marketing Planning Traps to Beware | Giant Voices Blog

Have you lived through this entrepreneur or nonprofit nightmare?

You identify your target audience, ideal persona, brand voice and creative style.

You identify your strategies for marketing with traditional and new media channels.

You work your tail off to create a marketing plan (you’d be amazed at how many people don’t do that) to generate great marketing, business expansion, revenue or brand awareness.

And then… the plan fails.

The event doesn’t fill. Sales are sluggish. Donations are down.

Shudder. You don’t ever want to endure that time-wasting exercise and frustration again. So, let’s talk about some of the traps you may have fallen into when making your marketing plan.

3 Deadly Strategic Marketing Planning Traps to Beware

Trap #1:

You didn’t set clear, measurable goals (or you did – but you set them unrealistically high).

Now, don’t get us wrong. At Giant Voices, we’re all about ambition.

Big goals have their own energy. They inspire action, passion, commitment. But there’s a fine line between ambition and self-sabotaging overreach.

Let’s pretend you are making a plan for your year-end membership drive. Start by looking at the numbers from the past few years—say they’re 77, 81, 68 and 75.

If you don’t set a target figure at all, you’re robbing yourself of the motivation that a good goal brings—AND of the satisfaction that comes from achieving a goal.

If you set your goal unrealistically high—say, 275 when you’ve never gotten higher than 81—you are likely to fail. Spectacularly. Which is rough on staff morale, and also kind of makes you look delusional.

In goal setting, as in life, it’s all about balance.

Trap #2:

The plan is watered down to appeal to everyone.

“Everyone” is not a target audience. Even if, technically, everyone could use your product, it doesn’t mean everyone wants to. (How many middle-aged men buy Barbie dolls?)

Instead of trying to craft a general message that will convince the masses to buy your product, zero in on the people who are already buying the kind of thing you’re selling.

Who will love what you sell? Who will rave about you?

Trap #3:

The plan is scattered.

Print! Radio! Email! Twitter! Vine! Pinterest! Blogging! Growth hacking! (What’s growth hacking again? We went to that workshop and everybody’s doing it. We’d better do it, too.)

Unless you have a massive staff and budget, don’t try to cram ALL THE THINGS into your marketing plan. It’s better to use five channels really well than 12 channels halfheartedly.

Our flagship course, Giant Academy, features structured, practical instruction that teaches you how to achieve your next G.I.A.N.T. goal in marketing, advertising, social media and more.

Have you ever noticed that high performers aren’t frazzled?

Their to-do list would give you hives. You know darn well they’ve got a mile-long list of major ambitions on their dockets—from launching a new enterprise and buying a building to reclaiming market share from a rival and heading two boards of directors.

Yet somehow they play it cooler than Don Draper circa Mad Men Season One. And are just as devastatingly effective.

This is what we like to call the “zen of making things happen.” Getting things done and ticking things off your to-do list with ease and efficiency. But how do you get there?

The Zen of Making Things Happen: A Productivity Blog from Giant Voices

In Week One of Giant Academy, our flagship course for people who want to be marketing masterminds, we dive deep into methods to multiply your productivity. This includes seven stress-lowering, high-impact productivity tactics that maximize your output.

Sleep
Exercise
Strike a (power) pose
Plan tomorrow today
Watch the ball
Eat that frog
Have a why

7 Stress-Lowering, High-Impact Productivity Tactics

Tactic 1: Sleep

Insufficient sleep makes you unhappy, unproductive and snack-prone. Enough said.

Tactic 2: Exercise

Exercise is not only a focus-booster and a proven antidepressant, it’s also sure to put an appealing glow in your cheeks.

Tactic 3: Strike a (power) pose

This fascinating TED Talk by social psychologist Amy Cuddy reveals how simply changing your posture for two minutes can trigger a cascade of confidence-boosting hormonal changes.

Watch it here: Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are

Tactic 4: Plan tomorrow today

High performers know you should separate planning and execution. Identify your most important tasks the night before.

Tactic 5: Watch the ball

Know, define and focus on your ambition. Don’t get so hung up on one way of getting it that you overlook another, quicker way. Evaluate every task with the simple question, “Will doing this help me reach my ambition?”

Tactic 6: Eat the frog

There’s always one on your to-do list. That task you hate doing (and, subsequently, put off accordingly).

Or maybe it’s not a task you hate doing, but it’s such a big, difficult-seeming task that you put off starting it.

If you have to eat a frog, the saying goes, eat it first thing in the morning. That’s where the name of Brian Tracy’s productivity bible Eat That Frog! comes from.

Make a habit of eating the frog first. Watch your productivity skyrocket and the quality of your days rise, too, as you no longer spend your time dreading That One Task.

Tactic 7: Have a why

Have a higher purpose for your everyday work—whether that’s giving the world beautifully-made products or providing for your family.

Lost touch with your why? Read our post on Rekindling Your Business Passion.

In addition to multiplying your productivity, Giant Academy is also a powerful professional development course for anyone—from solopreneur to creative to marketing firm senior account executive—who wants to learn successful strategies for creating brand awareness, marketing campaigns and advertising campaigns, design social media key messages and learn how to grow a business.