ALWAYS PLAN AHEAD!
Most marketing people regard themselves as creative souls, first and foremost, and of course, whichever part of the marketing spectrum you work in, you do need to have a certain ‘creative spark’ to come up with the ideas that are necessary to keep you in the spotlight. One of the major differences between a successful marketing campaign and a bit of a disaster, however, is nothing to do with creativity; a really good marketing person will regard organisation and planning as the key criteria to success.
People working in big company marketing departments will complain that they have to spend too much time on planning, reporting and discussing what will be done, often leaving too little time for the work itself; but this really is a very necessary part of the work, and even if you are only working on a very low budget, or you are a relatively small company, planning and organising will make a huge amount of difference to your end result.
If you are an SME, make yourself a plan in the same way as you might make yourself a budget. Think about the key points in your year – if you are hoping to do a lot of PR, you need to have stories to build the PR around – when are you likely to have these? Maybe you are producing a new product at some point, planning to take on a new and high level employee, perhaps you have a high profile guest arriving from somewhere else – your plan should incorporate all of these things so that you can prepare for them and incorporate them into your marketing. Thinking about doing some advertising? Then don’t leave it until the really key time for you to be advertising; you need to book it in advance and you need to give yourself time to prepare the advert.
