For everything you do, you need to set a timeline. In the real world of business, there is always a sense of urgency to complete your tasks within targeted timeline set either by your superior or your clients.
Your S.M.A.R.T. Small Business Marketing Strategies Timeline
A timeline is a target completion time for your projects. Your Marketing Plan Must come with a set time line for completion. Many novices when writing marketing plans do not include a timeline but get overtly engrossed in planning the strategies involved.
And yes, get S.M.A.R.T. with your marketing plan timeline. As you measure your goals with the S.M.A.R.T. Formula in your Marketing Plan you may also use it to evaluate your marketing plan timeline with this same guidelines.
A quick recap of the S.M.A.R.T. Formula is to set your goals to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. Check out how we apply similar principles but with slight twists to set your Marketing Plan Timeline below:
Marketing Plan Timeline – Adopting the S.M.A.R.T. Formula
“Specific”
Be Precise & Exact. This defines the exact actions that Must be achieved within the set time frame.
“Measurable”
Quantify Your Goal. How many percent of works in progress should you have completed within the set miles stones or phases of your marketing plan timeline.
You Must, in this criterion, factor in a very critical aspect, namely to Pre-empt contingencies that could arise. Even veteran marketers tend to omit this and prefer to fight the fire when things go awry.
“Achievable”
Be Realistic of your Resources. Be fair to yourself and your co-workers whenever you set timelines or target completion time. Never over stretch and compete with time. It hurts the quality of your work and could even adversely affect cohesiveness in the process.
“Relevant”
This is Relative to other functions. How relevant and applicable is your marketing timeline to the ad design department if you need to run a TV Ad campaign in three days? Again, be aware of other functional schedules.
“Timely”
Your Marketing Timeline should be set in stages of milestones for easy measurement of completion.
The above formula has actual application effectiveness with my clients especially with they lack the discipline during project management.
Stay tuned for more where we shall be walking through together the lateral mapping of your Marketing Plan Timeline with your marketing plan and small business marketing strategies for Implementation.
Meantime, you can get more information on Marketing Plans here
