Fort Worth Small Business & Duct Tape Marketing: Step 7 – Live by a calendar – Manage your brand! | The Marketing Twins at 1429 Creative: Small Business Marketing

To read the previous post(s) in this series, start here:

Often times, when we get through with a marketing overview with clients, this is the look we get. It’s often that you see pictures like this associated with the stress of taxes or being overwhelmed by debt. It is our hope that you don’t ever feel the same way about marketing! If you are a like so many other small businesses, you are not alone if you feel like you have so many ideas, you’ve heard of so many tools and tactics and you’ve been informed of what you NEED to be doing – but you don’t know HOW to get it done, WHERE to start, or WHEN to do it all. That’s why we’re marketing coaches – to come alongside and relieve that burden from you.

For the past month, we posted all these important steps to successful marketing. While each step was just an overview (and was loaded with ideas for you to implement), we hope you got a sense of the systematic approach we’re taking. These are principles based on the proven small business marketing system called Duct Tape Marketing. As John Jantsch, founder of DTM, likes say, “just live by a calendar.” Buy a wall-size calendar, and simply start plotting and planning what you are going to do over the next few months. Don’t try and do it all at once. Start back to Step 1 and remember the critical foundation of marketing to your target market!

Managing your marketing and your brand is an on-going discipline – you have to stay on top of things. You don’t have to invest hours each day, but you need to dedicate a significant amount of time each month. For some, you’ll need to take a day to line out all your marketing efforts for the month. Others would rather take a couple of hours at the beginning of each week. If you have a powerful online presence, you’ll likely want to be online regularly managing your online presence.

So now what? We of course wish you success as you take a “do-it-yourself” approach to your marketing – it’s not easy, but we hope to have offered a strong gameplan. But as marketing coaches, we are always available to stand alongside you and coach you through the steps. Contact us and let us put together a marketing coaching package that will enable you to launch a more effective marketing strategy!

– Randy Vaughn – Fort Worth’s Only DUCT TAPE MARKETING Authorized Coach