Increase Income - 3 Creative Calendars For Planning A Profitable 2010
The secret to making your income grow by leaps and bounds is to have a simple system
in place that organizes your list-building, marketing, and promotional activities. It is important to invest time in managing these activities, because the size of your list, as well as the timing and quality of your marketing and promotional activities, directly influences the amount of your income.Having said this, the problem many entrepreneurs experience is managing all these activities quickly becomes overwhelming, because there are just too many different activities to manage.
The solution to this problem is to create three different calendars to manage all activities you must do to grow your business. These three calendars are:
1. List-building
2. Marketing
3. Promotional activities
Using these calendars will banish overwhelm you may feel at all you have to do to grow your business. Having three calendars may seem like it complicates the planning process, but, it actually simplifies it.
I found when I tried to combine all my list-building, marketing, and promotional activities into one calendar, I ended up with a massive calendar that was a paralyzing mess. By breaking up these distinctly different activities into three simple calendars, it made my list-building, marketing, and promotional activities easier to manage. It will help you do the same, too.
Here are the three simple tips about how to create your own simple calendars, just like the ones I use to manage my business-building and income-generating activities with ease.
Tip #1 - List-Building Calendar
A List-Building Calendar will simply detail out for you the timing of all the different list-building activities you will do throughout the year to build your list of prospects.
To begin building this calendar, take a pencil and write down on a piece of paper a list of the different list-building activities you intend to do. For example, some common and easy to implement list-building activities include:
- Offer free teleseminars
- Offer to be a guest speak on other people's teleseminars
- Write and submit articles online/print publications
- Launch Pay-Per-Click campaigns
- Speak at live events
- Blog
- Participate in various social media activities
- Submit press releases
- Networking
After you write down your list of list-building activities, plot these different activities on your List-Building Calendar. I recommend categorizing this calendar by month, and then by week, such as January, Week one, Week two, etc. Doing so will make it easy to see 1) how often, and, 2) what you are doing to build your list of prospects and potential buying customers!
Tip #2 - Marketing Cash Calendar
A Marketing Cash Calendar helps you to plan the different products and programs you intend to launch during the year to generate your planned revenues.
To begin to create this calendar, first write down all the different products and programs you plan to promote in the coming year (or whatever is your planning timetable). Then, create a goal for how many of each product or program you want to sell. For example, you may have a product titled, 'Information Product A,' and your goal is to sell fifty copies at $100 each in January, for total estimated revenue of $5,000.
Then, using the same calendar format as for your List-Building Calendar (by month and week), plot your planned launch dates for each product and program. The launch date is the actual date you expect to be generating income from a promotion. Also, include a column for 'Total Monthly Revenue,' so you can see what your planned revenue is by month, and then add it up all months at the bottom of the column to see your total planned revenues for the year.
You may want to plan a maximum of four, certainly no more than six, different promotions in one year. The reason is it can become very complicated for you to manage promoting more than one product or program at a time. In addition, people on your list will get confused about the different offers, become irritated, and unsubscribe from your list (which some will do anyway when you promote).
Tip #3 - Promotional Activities Calendar
Looking at your Marketing Cash Calendar, use this calendar to plan the different promotional activities you will do for a SPECIFIC product or program launch. This means you will have a different Promotional Activities Calendar for each individual planned product or program launch.
To create this calendar, list each of the specific activities you will do to promote, such as:
- Mention in ezine
- Tweet about the promotion
- Write about in blog
- Lead preview teleseminars
- Write articles about the topic, addressing benefits/objections
- Send direct mail to existing clients
Then, look at the launch date, and work backwards from this date to plot out the timing, and different promotional activities you will do. Allow a period of four to six weeks to 'seed' the program, and then two weeks for active promotion and launch.
By keeping your calendars separate, and simple, this allows you to focus your energy on creating results, and increasing your income in a grander way.
Copyright 2009, Bonita Richter
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