Fri: 03 Jun 2011

Epic Launch: Keep your marketing on schedule

One of my new favorite blogs is Epic Launch (http://epiclaunch.com/). They’ve got a ton of great lists on their site, including one on keeping your marketing plan on schedule. I really dig this list. With a lot of the startups I work with, one of the big challenges is keeping projects and tasks on schedule. When you’re the only one minding the store – it’s damned easy for the emergencies to take over (even when they’re not emergencies) and for the work that requires a consistent and steady tempo to get done erratically and inconsistently. That’s why this tip is so spot on:

“Visualize Your Web Marketing Plan

One of the best things you can do is create a visual strategy. Put together a month by month and day by day strategy in an excel file and keep track of all your efforts. Put together your plan of attack for 6 or 12 months so you can see what it is that you will be doing. The organization and visualization will allow you to stay on track with everything you do. It will also keep you motivated to continue moving forward with all the efforts you have planned. Keep in mind that this plan can always be tweaked and modified in order to stay innovative in your approach.”

Love it! Check out Epic Launch and soak up the brilliance.

3 Reasons Why Business Plans Fail

I’ve helped several people put together business plans. The business plan I put together for my comedy club was used as a sample form in a book on business plans. Theoretically, I know something about business plans. I’ve seen some bad ones. The worst ones I’ve seen tend to be bad for one of these reasons.

3 Reasons Why Business Plans Fail

1. Filling in the Blank

There are plenty of software packages and business plan templates out there on the tubes of the Internet. While they can give you bit of structure when you’re completely lost and on your own – they can also have you focusing on issues which make little sense if any. A business plan that’s intended for venture capitalists or other serious investors needs to have an exit strategy – a plan for cashing out the investors. If you’re putting together a business plan for a small business or some business that you want to build and grow – you don’t need an exit strategy. Your exit strategy is filing for bankruptcy and moving back to your parent’s basement. Don’t fill in the blanks if you don’t understand the blanks.

2. Failure to you know, plan

Want to create a bad business plan – don’t use it to detail what you’ll actually do, use it to provide a 10,000 foot view of something you need to have microscopic insight into. This tends to be compounded by the fill-in-the-blank approach, where a business has a ‘marketing plan’ consisting of ‘generating great word of mouth, building the brand and engaging in social media.’ I’m reminded of a stand-up comic who asked an audience member what he did for a living. The guy in the audience said “Nothing” to which the comedian replied “Then how do you know when you’re done?” If your plan is that vague, how do you know when you’re doing it?

3. A Plan for World Domination

Not every business is going to be successful. And yet every bad business plan seems to not only promise success, but promises the kind of success that results in each investor ending up with enough money to buy their own island and flood it with enough filthy lucre to sink the damned thing. Project a reasonable growth arc and realize you’re not going to turn a web design company into the second coming of the Roman empire.

Avoid these common mistakes and keep your business plan alive.