You don’t want to wait until January of 2021 to start planning your marketing strategy and calendar. 2021 is at our doorsteps and I want us to have a closer look at your
2021 goal setting and marketing planning.
I believe that it is very important to take some time and map out all our goals, and I would suggest always doing it in December.
Map out different areas of your life
One of the first things that I do when I think about understanding my goals is mapping out the different areas of my life. Business, personal health, finances, and family. Then I write down everything I want to do. When it comes to goal setting it is important to understand that the key to creating good goals is to be certain that they are specific and tangible. This provides you with benchmarks and milestones you can actually work towards.
Here’s an example: If you say something like, “I want to get in shape”, that is a very unspecific goal. But, if you say “I want to fit into my X size jeans”, that is a good goal, but it’s not a great goal. If you were to say “I want to get to 21% body fat and lose 30 pounds”, that is a specific and measurable goal. So, make sure that every goal you set is specific and tangible.
Business Goals by categories
What are business goals and their different categories?
The different categories would be Sales, marketing, product development, finances, team, etc… After writing down the categories, you need to break it down one more layer.
- I want to have a million-dollar run rate by the end of the year.
- I want to have a hundred members enrolled in my business ecosystem program.
- I want to have launched my foundation, my SLO funnel, my social made simple course and my social snapshots.
Next, go through your list and do the same for marketing:
- I want to reach out to my “Dream 100” 5x a week
- I want to grow my email list to 10,000
- I want to grow my Instagram to 20K
- I want my podcast to be in the top 100
You do that for each category of your business. When it comes to sales, it is important that you do the math!
- What is the math breakdown of each of the different things that are available to you?
- With this goal, what are the things that I need to do to make that goal happen?
If we look at my goal example of 100 members in my business ecosystem builders program, I need to get roughly two new members per week.
- I need to grow my list with 5,000 new people
- I need to implement my Dream 100.
- I need to track data for conversions, for primer products.
- I need to finish ancillary products to drive people into the community.
- I need to create a new free funnel as a lead generator
- I need to implement my nurture sequence.
Those are all the tasks that need to happen to reach that set goal.
HERE you can access the PowerPoint presentation I did for my business ecosystem builders group training. Print it out and see how everything is broken down. You have to understand what you have going on!
Look at your calendar
Once I have my ideas on paper, I like to look at the calendar. I take a physical calendar, some paper tape and I start marking out all the different planned events.
- Kids’ birthdays, Holidays, vacations, events, travel plans, etc…
Depending upon the price point of the products you’re selling; it is important that you have 4 to 8 periods for launching and promotion based on your business cycle.
Launching periods
For example, the fitness industry is usually slow in the summer. That is a good time for creating products. It’s important to understand what the cycles are in your business. Look at your calendar month by month and be specific about what you want to do. “In January I will launch this, in March I will launch that, ….” Remember, you want to have 4 to 8 periods where you are heavily promoting something.
Next, you need to need to prioritize what needs to happen. If you want to launch a course in March, you need to increase your list size first. For example, if I wanted to do a pre-order of my book, I need to have the landing page and sales page written, plus a period of time leading up to that where I can actually write the book. You have to make time and prioritize what needs to happen. I take it one step further and I break it down to Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 and map it all out.
Yearly Quarters
In every quarter, I only write down the big initiatives. Once I understand what my big initiative is for Q1, I break that into three milestones which I usually like to accomplish within each month.
- Milestone one, milestone two, milestone three
- Next, I take each milestone and I break it down into task one, task two, task three.
- Then I look at what needs to happen behind the scenes. (creating the sales page, creating the product, the email sequence, testing the tech, creating the member’s area).
- Then I look at the front-facing marketing (list building, the nurturing of the list, the value-driven content, the podcasting, the launching, etc…)
The ‘behind the scenes’ and the ‘front facing’ marketing have to happen concurrently for your launches to be a success!
I know it sounds like a lot, but it really is not when you break it down and you break it down into actionable tasks. It becomes very manageable to make it happen; you just can’t fall behind!
Ninja tips for success
Here are a few Ninja tips for success when it comes to your strategy and marketing planning for 2021.
1. It’s really important to remember, you can promote outside of your designated big promotional periods. The set promotional periods are intended to ensure you have sales success.
As we go about 2021, you will hear me talking a lot more about minimalists launching. I am not a huge fan of launching; but there is something to having a minimalist launch where you drive traffic for a period of time into an existing program. You will hear me talk a lot more about that in phase two of business ecosystem builders and you might possibly even see a course about that. However, you can always get that if you are a member of the business ecosystem builders program. You can email me for more details.
2. You should always be selling and asking your audience for sales on a regular basis. The rule of thumb is one in every seven posts.
If you have existing products you can focus on the front-facing tasks of marketing and lead generation. I highly recommend periods of value especially when you were doing very formal open cart, closed cart launches.
In my program, The Foundation, for example, we are accepting enrollment now through January 15th. After January 15th, people will have to get on the waiting list. However, my business ecosystem builders program is evergreen, you can join that program at any time. If you are interested to join the foundation program, please contact me.
It’s important to understand the difference. The Foundation is more of a very formal cart open, cart closed launch. I want people to go through the program as a cohort. I want them to start and finish together. It is very different from selling a program every seven posts on your social media, but this does not eliminate the need to have evergreen sales, this is in addition to it.
3. Planning and mapping are key.
Be sure to use a tool in a system you like. I’m creating a planner at the moment the Finishers Club Planner. I am super excited about that and it’s all about finishing and completing the task from start to finish. I will use my planner with my MeisterTask to map out all of the details and tasks.
4. Leave space for ideas that will come up (Trust me they will!) Find space for them on the marketing calendar and put them in a parking lot for future use.
Either leave space for them on the marketing calendar knowing that you will come up with an idea or put them on the marketing calendar for future use. You have to decide on one of those two. Ideas will come up and you will want to get derailed by that. It’s really important to stay focused! If you commit to “here are the things and I’m going to do them in this particular order”, stick with that because then you’ll have stuck to your content planning process and you won’t veer from that.
Remember to download the PowerPoint presentation and start mapping out your goals!
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