PLANNING & TRACKING – Promotional Calendar

Speaker 1:

Moving on to step number eight, promotions, and I've got a really nifty little chart for you that's going to, I think, make things a lot simpler. So let me give you a story, and I'm going to give it in a slightly different format. Same thing. It's really the million dollar message, right? But the hero in this case is the architect. The architect was frustrated by not knowing where to promote the offers, not knowing how to track the marketing or what works and what doesn't. So what the architect wanted was knowing where to promote, having a system which made it simple, that maybe she could even delegate to someone else, and the ability to track results so she could see what was working and what wasn't.

Speaker 1:

So here's the situation before. She was doing nothing but waiting for referrals. The problem was people were referring down. They were referring to people, almost their type of projects, or usually smaller. People don't tend to refer up. If someone has a million dollar house, they don't tend to refer someone who wants a $4 million house. They feel more comfortable referring down. Or they're referring not at all. So not much was happening. There wasn't any marketing happening. There was a bit of confusion and the architect didn't really know what to do or how to get started. This whole marketing thing never been taught at university or college. And so, it was all a bit of a mystery.

Speaker 1:

After, once she got the promotional calendar, which was the secret weapon, staff members were able to follow a simple system. The chart sits on the wall, allows you to track results. And the architect, she was able to double down on the winners and cut the losers because she could see exactly what was working and what wasn't, where the leads were coming from or where they weren't. So the secret weapon was the promotional monthly calendar. And it'll work for you even if you've never done marketing before, because you'll become a pro because your marketing will become methodical and you can see what works.

Speaker 1:

Behold, the promotional calendar. This is it. The beauty of it is it's so simple really. It's just got the months running along the top. So you can map out the year, what you're going to do. And I guess this is pretty handy. This is a checklist of all the promotional strategies that I can think of that I've seen architects do and do successfully. Some of them more successful than others. I'm a big fan for the referral stuff. But anyway, this is how you map out your promotional calendar. So it's pretty simple. It's really a checklist. You can go, and let's say in this case, this person is doing an email they've chosen. We're going to do an email to our list. Oops. Email to our list two times, have a break, two times have a break. I'm not saying... This is a suggestion. These are just an example of how you'd fill this chart out. So in this case, they're doing press releases every four months and they're doing the nine word email three times a year. So it's just a simple way for you to check and chart what you're doing.

Speaker 1:

Now, the reason I've got the green lines in here is because it signifies that it's kind of set and forget. Once you've put your offers on your website, then you've got a promotion every single month and the green line just running all the way through for the year signifies that. So you can see promotions on your website, email signature. Once you set up an offer into your email signature, then in theory every time you open an email, it should pop into your signature, and there might be an icon that talks about one of your offers, so it's good. And then asking for referrals, you might say, "Well, I do that all the time as well," so that's fine. We'll put that green line through that.

Speaker 1:

But if you actually have to do something, like the circle of love, and let's say you're going to do a question of the month every single month, an email out to anybody on your list, then that would be a tick because you actually have to do it. Whereas the green lines, you don't have to do it. Once you've set it up, it's set and forget. I suppose, technically speaking, asking for referrals should be text as well because it's not really set and forget. You do have to ask all the time. So it's really a case of going through these different strategies, working out what you like, and then working out a common sense order.

Speaker 1:

Now, the beauty with this is you could, once you've worked out what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, you can hand this to someone else and say, "There you go. This is the marketing plan. And I want you to go away and make sure we have a newsletter every month," and they can see exactly what is required every single month. Now, you don't have to have a whole lot of texts. This is pretty busy, but then this is just an email, and then there's another email. This is just this sort of press release, so if you're into that type of thing. It's completely up to you to. Bring this along to the weekly Q&A calls and you could ask to have it reviewed. We can talk about the pros and cons of the different marketing strategies in the SIX Q&A call. Or of course, you could do it in your buddy group. If you form a buddy group, go into the buddy channel on Slack, find yourself a buddy, and this could be the basis for a discussion around what your plan is.

Speaker 1:

Of course, the more ambitious you are, the more things you'll need to be doing probably, or you'll have to pick whatever it is you're going to do and do it really, really well. But the beauty with this is it clarifies everything up and it makes it very easy to pass to someone else and tell them what to do. I do reckon you should pin it to the wall because seeing it will remind you there's stuff to do. Don't give yourself too many texts. Don't overload yourself, particularly as your new, working your way through the program. Maybe just start with the dirty 30 newsletter and some emails, and then build up over time because you've got a lot of marketing stuff to do initially, so don't load yourself up too soon, too fast. Okay. That's my thoughts on the promotional calendar.