Creating and executing a marketing plan for your local business can be complicated. Fortunately, there are many resources available to help local businesses create an online marketing plan. If you have the time and inclination, you can create a marketing plan for your business that will help bring in customers.
Once you have created a marketing plan and it’s working, life is good! You’re writing blog posts, sharing content on social media, managing your SEM campaigns and monitoring your search engine ranking with your web analytics on a regular schedule when things get complicated. Maybe your marketing efforts are paying off and your business grows like crazy or maybe you have issues with employees or equipment that cause you to fall behind on your marketing plan. That’s when things get complicated. What do you do?
First of all, don’t get too stressed if you miss one or two posts in your schedule. If the issue is temporary and you will soon be returning to your regularly scheduled program, don’t sweat it. If, however, you are experiencing a major change in your routine that will prevent you from following your original plan, it’s time to step back and review your options.
Change Your Plan
The first option is to change your plan. If you were previously posting three times a week, maybe you decide to post twice a week or even once a week until you can get back to your regular schedule. You can also decide to focus on one area specifically, like your own blog or your Facebook page. Base your decision on the latest social media trends and best practices for your type of business.
Use a Service
Another option is to use some type of scheduling service so that you can spend a day or a weekend building up content and scheduling it according to your original plan. Blog posts are easy to schedule and there are many tools available to help you schedule your social media content, such as HootSuite, Buffer, and SocialOomph. However, you will still need to create, compile and schedule your content.
Get Some Help
Finally, you might want to get some outside help. You might consider hiring a part-time or full-time employee or even a contractor to manage your marketing efforts for you, while you focus on other aspects of your business. Another option is to hire a company that specializes in marketing for local businesses to serve as your marketing department. By hiring an expert, you can focus on your core business, while your marketing expert can handle your online and offline advertising efforts.
Whatever you decide, the important thing is to make sure to continue with your marketing efforts. While a short absence probably won’t do any permanent damage to your online presence, dropping your marketing campaign for a lengthy period of time can be harder to come back from, as your competitors pass you in your search engine rankings and social media presence.
