[Smart Marketing] Marketing Planning: Chapter 1

Several times in the past I’ve received calls or e-mails from pest management professionals who are interested in somehow formalizing their marketing activities. After a few questions and a few hopefully honest answers I’m usually able to determine if a marketing plan is appropriate. What are your annual revenues? How much is your annual marketing budget? What are you currently doing to grow your business? It’s not so important how you answer these questions. It’s only important that you know the answers to these questions.

While I’m intellectually aware of exactly how many small businesses make up our industry, it’s always sobering to talk to hard working men and women who operate their pest management and lawn care businesses on little more than a day to day basis.

"Well, I think my revenues last year were about (fill in the blank) but I was hoping you could tell me how much I should spend on marketing." "I’ve got a Yellow Page ad, but it’s so expensive and I don’t know if it’s working." "I can’t afford to do too much; what’s the best thing to do?" I’ve heard all of these at one time or another and once or twice, I’ve heard them all from the same person!

Believe it or not, there are really only seven things you need to consider when preparing a marketing plan for your business. I’ve discussed this before, but over the next seven months (barring any lightning bolts of wisdom I feel compelled to share), I’m going to break down the elements of a marketing plan in time for you to put one together in time for the 2004 calendar year.

This column will be dedicated to a broad overview and will outline some of the things we’re going to be examining between now and then. So, renew your subscription to PCT and save these next eight articles.

THE MAN WITH THE PLAN. The seven elements of a marketing plan for your business, pretty much without distinction in terms of size or scope of services are: budget, demographics, geography, duration, message, media and measurement. When you’ve adequately addressed all of these issues, you’ll see a marketing plan emerge.

Your budget should include everything you’re prepared to invest in growing your business. EVERYTHING! If it’s going to help you grow your business and you can attach a dollar figure to it, count it!

Demographics involves a question I’ve probably asked more than a dozen times in these Smart Marketing columns. Who is your customer? You already have several hundred to several thousand customers. Figure out who is in the bull’s eye of your target.

Geography means answering another similar question: Where is your customer? In terms of proximity to where you are currently doing business, identify the part of the world from where you plan to find more customers.

Duration has to do with the time frame in which you plan to execute your marketing activities. It ranges from once or twice during the course of the year to all the time. It also relates to your budget.

Message has to do with what kind(s) of idea(s) you want to communicate to your potential customers. It could be based on your service offering, on your company or on some other point of interest to that yet to be secured customer.

Media are the means by which you communicate those aforementioned messages. They are all viable and they all have a particular purpose in the grand scheme of things. You can’t do them all. No advertiser can. Not even Coca-Cola.® So which one(s) do you choose?

Measurement is how you determine the success or lack thereof of your marketing activities. There are lots of ways of measuring results. Some are meaningful. Some aren’t.

Hopefully by the time we finish this series of Smart Marketing articles you’ll be able to create a marketing plan for your business that will help you have a big year next year. Maybe in the process we’ll answer a question or two that will help you in the short term. In any case, I promise you’ll know more then than you probably do now about this whole esoteric process.

Stay tuned.

The author is senior vice president of Massey-Persons-Brinati Communications, a subsidiary of Massey Services Inc., Maitland, Fla. He can be reached via e-mail at bbrewer@pctonline.com.