15 Nov Be More Proactive and Less Reactive
Too often in business we spend our days reacting to whatever comes our way. We have a saying around our office that if 70 percent of the news that day was good, we had a good day. The reality is, you do have to be reactive to keep your business going. This includes responding to client needs, fixing a piece of equipment when it breaks, or responding to the changes in the market.
Did any of us plan for a world pandemic in 2020? Nope. In the same way we did not plan for the Great Resignation we started to see in Q2 of this year or the supply chain issues we are dealing with today. But we can be more proactive in 2022, and it starts with planning today.
Let’s start with your marketing strategy. What are you planning to promote in the new year? You need to plan out your calendar starting with January and work your way through December. Each month you push a different product that makes sense for the season. Get your sales manager involved in the process.
Look at the major brands and how they incorporate their marketing with sales. AT&T is running a promotion this month that every new and existing customer can get $800 off a new iPhone. The TV and Radio commercials are all promoting the same brand. The social media and online digital ads are in sync. And if you walked into an AT&T store today you would see banner ads all promoting the same deal. That does not happen overnight. That is a plan that was decided in 2020.
The problem with reactive marketing strategies is you can never fully prepare or track results.
Most small businesses I meet are too busy chasing the next shiny object when it comes to marketing. They will spend money today on a plan they heard about yesterday. The problem with reactive marketing strategies is you can never fully prepare or track results.
There is a better way. At Centerpost Media we sit down with our members and help them plan out a marketing calendar that will lead to more sales. More time gives your team more opportunity to train and prepare for more sales.
You need to leave margin in your plan to react to things as they come up. That is good business. What is not good business is making reactions to your plan. There is a balance. Most of your messaging needs to be planned out ahead of time.
This concept goes beyond marketing. Your operations can better prepare for things like fulfillment or even fixing broken parts if you plan ahead. Create an emergency fund that is used when things break. This is an idea Dave Ramsey preaches for personal financing, but it works in business as well. Start setting aside money each month that can only be used in an emergency.
Set aside money to start to proactively replace aging equipment or purchase backup equipment. We recently invested thousands of dollars to have a backup power supply to our corporate offices. After a major ice storm hit North Texas in February and then a beer truck took out the powerlines in April, we knew we needed to be proactive and not reactive for the next power loss. Now we have two sources of backup power to keep our studios online.
The funny part about planning, is if we do it right, we actually build more margin in our lives to react to things.
Scott Miller is the CEO of Centerpost Media, host of the Create. Build. Manage. Show (seen on BizTV, heard on BizTalkRadio, and available wherever you listen to podcasts,) and a member of the Forbes Agency Council, Entrepreneur Leadership Network, and Dallas Business Journal Leadership Trust. You can find Scott on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter via “@scottmillerceo” or on LinkedIn via “@scottmillermedia.” Centerpost Media is a content marketing agency with a vision to help every business they encounter with their media needs by providing outstanding quality, service and value. Centerpost Media is the parent company to BizTV, BizTalkRadio, BizTalkPodcasts and Bizvod.