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A week before Christmas last year, a famous illustrator based in New York was bombarded with calls from various clients asking for commissioned work to be done, themed around the holidays. While the illustrator was busy with previously assigned work, most of these potential clients were declined. This is a classic example of planning gone wrong from the client’s side. The glitch could have easily been avoided with some foresight and essential content planning. A useful marketing tool that helps you do just that is a content planner. Much like a regular planner that provides insight into your upcoming activities, content planners give your marketing team a much-needed blueprint to work with. There are many reasons why content planners as a tool are highly useful for your brand’s image to stay relevant.

Let’s say you have a startup or a small business with a brilliant product or service.  Effectively marketing the product/service is the only way one can go about ensuring a loyal base of customers. At this point, it is imperative to have a budget for marketing, in other words, an amount of money that is earmarked for marketing. This budget can be utilized towards paid advertising, generating web/social media content, social media promotions and more. Among the working costs of a company, the marketing budget accounts for about 11% on average, according to WebStrategies, Inc 

In case the map does not open in your browser, here is a SHARE link directly from Mindjet. https://share.mindmanager.com/#publish/PFJ-Jgek50dzYRfqIrEFPpujDSGePsjvPG-FRk2p

Sometimes, there is just not enough money to do EVERYTHING you would like to do.

Recently, I had the privilege of talking to a prospect who wanted to enlist me to her team and support her event. We talked about her needs, her long-term vision, short-term goals and the project on deck.

I asked for $57,500. She said, "you are ON, but, you' ve got to make do with $20K. That's all we can invest in this project at this time. What can we do?"

Responses like this place me in an awkward position. As the process engineer, I now have to decide which battles are worth fighting, and what MUST get accomplished between this moment and March, when the event is to occur. I need to figure out a way to make-do and remove certain marketing assets so as to not compromise the event’s marketing needs. 

No one likes to lose money. Yet, we ALL lose money every day. I recently discovered there are at least 171 ways to lose a million dollars, believe it or don’t. We count money we make, we count money we spend, we count money we owe, we count money owed to us, we count money which we pay taxes on, we count money we save... but we fail to count money that we do not make.

The whole concept of "fortune not made" can be devastating to a small business that happens to be struggling to merely survive. It can most certainly slow down the growth of a thriving business as well. There is no accounting system for lost data, lost money and "fortune not made".

So the problem is real. Some call it unconverted leads or lost opportunities problem. Clinicians call it unscheduled treatment plans. At eLaunchers.com we call this problem diamonds in your database.

This problem is amplified in the life of physicians, cosmetic dentists, orthodontists, cosmetic surgeons, attorneys and any business who sells a high value product or service.

Thanksgiving holiday weekend is an excellent time to review 2018 business plan and begin preparation of a game plan for 2019.

Back in 2014 Dipa and I went to Infusionsoft headquarters to participate in Infusionsoft Elite Forum and created our first ever Everest diagram.

Bringing home the Elite framework was one of the best business decission we have ever made. In this blog I am going to share the annual planning, quarterly review and monthly progress monitring process. We have modified what we learned from Elite Forum to suite our needs and adopted tools that are appropriate for our size business.Today, I am going to share my planning process. I hope this helps my business owner friends.

In order to capture and convert a steady stream of leads, manage the journey of a prospect before their first transaction, and to build out of a life long relationship, you need a system. A system that is made up of rituals, rhythm, and technology that manages your ritual and rhythm.

Litening to Rusty Shelton from Advantage was enlightening. While most of things he discussed in authority marketing and content marketing is considered common sense to savvy digital marketers and hubspot users, his take on exactly how to develop your content strategy and the mechanics of messaging was very interesting. 

In order to grow your business, you are going to need three things. These three things can only be successful when applied together. You cannot have one on its own and expect to grow and be successful. If anything, you are losing money, time, and effort to get that one part up without the others. After you have these three things, you will acquire growth that is triggered by your efforts and managed by your diligence. You do not need anything else other than all three. Here are the three things:

We believe that marketing is made up of five core elements. Arts, Language, Time, Data and Money. 

While you need an artistic brain and an understanding of buying psychology to be creative on arts and language front, deals are made of time, data and money. Every marketer, regardless of their background and their current role in marketing must understand the basic marketing math.