Keeping your business name on the top of the minds of your customers and prospects on a regular basis is very important. We advise our clients to create a Street Fighter Marketing Calendar to help plan and organize promotional efforts throughout the year. Here’s what we recommend:
1. Get A Big “Year-At-A-Glance” Type Calendar - Select a calendar where the space for each day of the month is large enough to write enough details about each promotional. Also, get the kind that works with erasable markers so you can make changes easily. Use this calendar for outlining your promotional year.
2. Get A “Month At A Glance” Type Calendar - This calendar allows for more detail and will focus on the implementation elements of each promotion outlined in your “yearly” calendar. Types of implementation may include the details involved in mailing postcards, newsletters, brochures, samples, phone calls, visits, events, sales, or even participating in trade shows. It’s all part of the planning stage. The other part is the implementation. A specific time should be allocated for making your Street Fighter marketing ideas come to life.
3. Develop An Idea Bank - As you get organized and create your calendar of events, list Street Fighter marketing ideas that you can use throughout the year. Start with the events or holidays that are paramount to your business. For example, businesses selling flowers, candy, jewelry and cards need to prepare far in advance of Valentine’s Day. If you know that the peak purchasing time leading up to February 14th starts in late January, you need to have your plan together two to three weeks before you want your advertising to hit.
4. Make Impact Every Four to Six Weeks - Supplement those key marketing event windows with additional promotions so that you are consistently on the minds of your customers every four to six weeks. For example, Speaker’s Bureau is a key client list for us. To this key list of about 350 account execs, during the next six months, we’ll mail several post cards, a video CD-ROM, our new book plus make individual phone calls.
5. Create Your Customer Hit List - Prioritize your Street Fighter customer list. Some you’ll want to contact every time, while others may only warrant a few efforts annually. In our case, we know that about half of our Speaker Bureau list have never booked us, therefore, they won’t be getting the new book, which is a more expensive promotional effort for us.
6. Evaluate And Modify - Remember, nothing is set in stone. If something is not working be flexible enough to modify your calendar to make it work for you.
Street Fighter Action Plan:
Get a calendar that displays the entire year.
Plan ways to contact your key customer base every 4 to 6 weeks
Use a variety of contact methods including advertising, mail, phone, fax, email, etc.
Create an idea bank of programs that you can use for various events or holidays
Modify your approach and think of ways to improve your response
The Street Fighter Marketing Calendar