Jonathan:

This is part two about how to put together your marketing plan. In the first video, I was talking about pulling together some data. Let’s talk about your marketing plan. Your marketing plan is going to start with building out a marketing calendar, which can be very simple. It’s basically just identifying when you are going to do certain types of marketing throughout the year. I’m going to explain that in a little bit more detail.

By using some of that data, such as where are your clients coming from, which zip codes, which sources, meaning what’s working best, which clients buy more from you when you do a door hanger campaign, and a … I use door hangers just to represent any type of marketing campaign. Do door hangers work better in a certain zip code, versus another zip code? Or, Facebook better in one versus another? You might double down. On Facebook, it’s a little less important to double down. That’s in digital marketing.

But, on the print marketing, EDDM, postcards, door hangers, lead letters, knocking on doors. Any of those types of things when you’re building out your marketing strategy, you absolutely want to look at data and you want to say, “Okay, which of those offline types of marketing,” meaning they’re not digital marketing, are working the best. Meaning, they’re bringing in the most clients, they’re bringing in the most revenue, and also before they even become a client, the most leads with the best conversion percentage. This is where we could talk for hours. I’ll try to stay on track here. Which ones are the best, okay? We’re looking at that. Which markets are the best, which lead sources are the best?

From that, you can decide, “Okay, I’ve only got $10,000 to spend …” Or, for a big company, “I’ve got 100 … I’m a big company, I’ve got 100 grand to spend,” or whatever that number is. Where do I want to spend it? Last year I spent money on offline marketing, print marketing, or door knocking in these markets. But, this one really outperformed all the others. I think there’s something to that, you know? You’re making a guess. I don’t think it was an anomaly, so let’s spend the majority of our marketing in that zip code, or in a couple zip codes, and let’s ignore these other zip codes.

This is exactly what I’ve done over the years. I’ve figured out where the best areas were. We even got down to the place of saying, “Where are the best neighborhoods? Let’s dial in those neighborhoods, and double down there, and let’s ignore other neighborhoods around those neighborhoods.” Because, at the end of the day, especially residential, the games about density. I’m considering that data, all right? I’m considering where should I spend my money?

I’m also thinking about things like, how much work can I handle? You might say to yourself, “Wow, I would love to sell X amount of work.” But, can you find enough team members, can you train them fast enough, can you find the trucks and equipment? If you get too many team members, will you now need an operations manager? Can you really get that done this spring? Those are things you need to ask yourself, and now you can also look at your data about when did clients come in last year, or when did leads come in, what was the conversion percentage? From that you … And, how much marketing did we do? From that you can extrapolate and say, “You know what? We could improve … If we’ve got the money, I could grow my marketing budget by 50%, or 100%. Even if it doubled my leads, I can still handle that amount of work at that time of year, because I can find enough people, and I’m competent in that.”

But, you want to be careful that you don’t overspen...