Pull together a group of employees and create an imaginary company.  Then tell the team, “you are the management of that company and your job is to kill our company.”  So the team puts together a plan that leverages every single weak point in your firm.  That is the morning exercise.  In the afternoon, the team reconvenes and talks about how they are going to counter attack.  What a great way to look at your compay through a different set of eyes.  You also end up with a list of improvements to make to your company.  After all, your competition is out there already planning on how to win your market share.  You might as well beat them to the punch.

With that said, here are some things we hope you’ve taken into consideration when finishing up your marketing plan for 2009:

1. Collaborate with the sales team.  Have you met with the VP of Sales and discussed the objectives for 2009?  Have you attended the sales meetings on a regular basis?  Do you know how the pipeline works and do you have a written agreement with the VP of Sales that describes exactly what qualifies as a lead from the marketing department? This way, you can avoid the conversation in July when you say you generated 2,000 leads and they say you generated 20.
2. Have a customer retention and growth plan.  Don’t even think about how you’re going to attract new business until you’ve figured out how you’re going to keep what you already have.  You’ve already made the major investment it takes to capture the customer.  Now you’ll want to develop a customer communication and retention plan that cross-sells and upsells your services to the existing customer base.  What is the lifetime value of your customer today?  How can you increase that number?
3. If you haven’t already, start developing your social media strategy. It can be overwhelming when you’re presented with all the different options for social media.   Blogging, podcasting, twittering, the list doesn’t end.  So don’t worry yet about what tools you’ll be using.  First start thinking about who you want to talk to, what is important to that audience, and what information you can share that will bring VALUE to your target audience and help them connect with you on a one-to-one basis.  Figure out the strategy first and then research the best tools you need to do the job.
4. Figure out how you’ll measure everything.  Do you have a CRM system yet?  Are you tracking your online analytics?  Do you have an inhouse mailing list?  Do you know how much revenue next year will come from existing customers versus net new business?  Do you know how many raw prospects it takes to develop a decent lead that ultimately ends up in a sale?  If you can’t measure your performance and justify your budget then you really are just a walking piece of overhead.
5. Develop three to five key marketing objectives for the year and put them on your whiteboard. Then make sure every activity somehow relates back to those key objectives.  Keep it simple and straightforward.  The key is consistency.

Finally, take the time to network with your colleagues.  There is so much to learn, the shared wisdom and collaboration that comes from meeting with your peers is invaluable.  It is easy to get so wrapped up in actually DOING the marketing for your company that you forget to look outside for fresh ideas, validation of your own and inspiration on how you can become better at your craft.

“What about the house?” you ask. “What about the bedrooms, the kitchen, how the structure is built? What about how we’ll use the house, the materials and content we want inside the house? What about all that?”

The architect looks at you and waves his hand. “Oh, we’ll get to all that stuff later, but look at these great bushes I want to plant up your driveway. Are they cool or what!!??” At this point, you are probably going to bean the architect and go find someone else a little more qualified.

Every day I see this scenario played out with business websites. The first concern is always about the look of the site, the graphics, the pictures. All the landscaping. But what about your structure? Your information architecture? What thought have you given to how people will use the site, how you’ll track performance, and give the visitors to your site the experience and information they need to move forward in the buying cycle?

There are many steps that need to take place long before you begin the graphic design for a website. And it requires a lot of hard work, careful thought, and research. But if you don’t build the infrastructure first, and make sure that your site is supporting your business strategy and sales goals, then you’ve wasted your money. I’ve outlined a process below, one that we follow at Zephyr when we’re planning, building and launching a site for a client.

Positioning & Messaging Meeting
We meet with the management team for about half a day. We want to identify the best way to position your company in the market place. What are your differentiators? How can we make you stand out from the crowd? How can we make sure site visitors understand your value proposition? It is essential to understand your brand, your key differentiators, the purpose for your site, and how it will be used BEFORE we start the project. Sometimes this exercise takes several meetings because our client is still a little fuzzy about these points.

Key words, phrases used by customers who need our service
We want to make sure we weave key words and phrases into our website. This will help with our search marketing activities. As part of the meeting above, we will discuss the sales process and environment and visit your competitors’ web sites to review their keyword focus and strategies. Then we will develop a comprehensive keyword SEO report.

Site map and structure of the site
This is the architecture of the website. We strategize the overall organization of the website and create the site map. This is one of the most critical parts of your web design. How will your users engage with you online? What will they be looking for? This site map (sometimes several pages deep) must be clearly defined and well thought out from the perspective of usability.

Technical design spec
Then we develop a more detailed “road map” of the site. It expands upon our agreed-upon sitemap to include our suggested navigation and content areas. We create a wire frame that shows where we will place the “blocks” of information on each page. This enables the designer and copywriter to do their work more efficiently.

This is also where we decide which key words we’re emphasizing. Normally, you devote one key word per page (for SEO). The copywriter uses this as a guideline when she begins writing for the website.

Graphical design spec
We then begin the design stage. We’ll spend quite a bit of time talking about your brand because the design, images selected, color palette, etc. have to support your brand. Normally, we create two concepts for your home page. When the home page concept is approved, we will design the secondary pages. This is also where we’ll start selecting the images and graphics for the website and decide if we need custom photography or illustrations.

Content creation for website
The copy writer started blocking out text as soon as the technical design spec was completed. It is critical that you have someone experienced in writing for the WEB assigned to this project. Do not, under any circumstances, let your engineers tell you that they can do it cheaper. Think about your behavior on the Internet. Do you read those huge blocks of text? Quite frankly, if you’ve gotten this far in my post I’m pretty amazed. Normally, we read online by focusing on Headers, Subheads, and bullet points. And remember, we’ve got to keep our SEO strategy in mind while we’re writing our copy. Don’t try to save money on this part – let an expert do this.

Programming of site and setup of Content Management (CMS) System
Your site should be created using some sort of OPEN SOURCE solution, like WordPress (this site was built in WordPress), Joomla (a really great CMS system) or something equally flexible. Do not allow anyone to develop your website using their “proprietary” software or CMS system. You’ll be chained to the vendor FOREVER or until you pay someone else to create a new website for you. You should have complete control over your website, with the freedom to add pages, change navigation, upload new images, update or change the web copy, etc. Although I would suggest you be very careful about who you give this power to, since the wrong person can seriously mess up your website (intentionally or not!).

Testing and uploading of site onto your server – go live!
This is the last step for the website. We test the site to ensure compatibility with all browsers, make sure the links all work, and upload the site to your server. We work with your IT department to ensure everything is performing properly and the site goes live. Make sure your site is tested with all the common browsers, and all the different versions of browsers. We’ve seen a lot of sites that look great in Internet Explorer 6.0 but fall apart in FireFox.

After the launch – SEO & PPC
The fun doesn’t end with the launch of your website. Today’s audience isn’t interested in a stagnant, brochure-style website. You want to make sure you have a plan to keep your site fresh and interesting. You also need to be committed to ongoing SEO if you ever hope to get ranked highly in Google and Yahoo. We’re becoming a world that is Internet-centric. Your best strategy for lead generation is going to be using a blend of search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search (PPC advertising) to ensure the greatest exposure and to drive traffic to your site. That’s how you make sure your website is working for you, every day, to help you grow your company, keep your customers, and generate new leads.