FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Tom Ellis
Mar.
2, 2000
Ellis Communications, L.L.C.
Phone (623) 780-4558
E-Mail dellis@syspac.com
With the stock market seesawing, the economy sending mixed signals and
consumer confidence waning, it’s more important than ever that nutritional
retailers protect their business by communicating with customers and
prospects.
“That means nutritional professionals need
a marketing plan, and they need it now,” says Martin R. Baird, president of
Phoenix, Ariz.-based Nutritional Marketing.
“Fortunately, writing and implementing an effective marketing plan is
not a difficult task. Retailers who worry about this process and postpone it are
putting their business in jeopardy in these uncertain economic times.”
Following are seven keys to
an excellent marketing plan. These
tips and others are provided on a daily basis by Nutritional Marketing through
its Web site nutritionalmarketing.com, a site that provides free marketing
information just for nutritional retailers.
Number 1 – Short and
Sweet. A one-page marketing plan
is sufficient for most retailers. It
should identify who you are, your target market and what you are going to do
for that market.
Number 2 – Turnkey.
You need supporting documents for your one-page marketing plan.
Organize these materials so that everything you need to do during the
next year is in view. You can
look at these materials at the beginning of the year, or any other time of the
year, and you will know what is happening next week or even next month.
Number 3 – Delegate.
Once the one-page plan is written and the supporting pieces are
developed, decide who will do what. You
shouldn’t be doing all the activities in the plan.
Decide which activities you will do and which ones will be carried out
by staff members.
Number 4 –
Accountability. One of the
reasons more marketing plans don’t succeed is because people don’t work
the plan. For a marketing plan to
work, it must have specific activities that happen by specific times. If people are not accountable for making them happen, they
won’t.
Number 5 – Grade It.
Look over all your marketing efforts at the end of each quarter and
give them a grade. What worked? What didn’t? What
paid for itself? See which
efforts were As and which were Cs or less, ones that you need to improve or
drop.
Number 6 – Hold Team
Meetings. Team meetings with all
the key people involved in implementing your marketing plan are very important
and should happen early and often. The
team will realize that marketing is a priority.
Number 7 – Changes Are
OK. If you come up with new
marketing ideas during the year, go ahead and plug them into your plan.
Your plan is a living document, and it needs to be altered from time to
time. But you must have the
strength to stay the course and not jump from one marketing idea to another.
Nutritional Marketing
provides a variety of services to nutritional retailers to help them improve
their marketing methods and increase revenues, including seminars and
conference speaking engagements on such topics as referrals, marketing, goal
setting and customer service.
Nutritionalmarketing.com is
the premiere Internet-based source for free marketing advice, information and
tools for self-driven, success-oriented nutritional retailers who are
demanding information that helps them market their business, meet the needs of
their customers and increase sales. It
offers such services as a free weekly electronic newsletter, free reports on
how to conduct different kinds of marketing and evaluation of retailers’
marketing materials that is provided at no charge when the critique is posted
online for all nutritional professionals to read. Nutritionalmarketing.com also offers an electronic forum
where retailers can learn from each other by discussing common problems,
sharing ideas and gaining new insights from their peers.
