Making Marketing Goals more digestible

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time

“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

You’ve probably heard this expression before. The “elephant” is the project, or goal, which is so large and challenging that you feel totally overwhelmed by it, and can’t even see where to start.

The advice is not to tackle it all at once, but to start with small steps. Take enough of them, and before you know it, you will have made serious progress – and no longer feel so overwhelmed.

For many business owners, online marketing is that elephant.

All those social media platforms….. So much to learn and understand …. Such an investment of time and money required…..

Where do you even begin? How do you make serious progress?

It can be totally paralysing.

In three months’ time, I guarantee that businesses across the world will make their New Year’s Resolution to “get on top of online marketing / make this the year we break through on social media / get to grips with LinkedIn.”

I don’t know about you, but those ambitious, broad New Years’ resolutions never work for me.

They’re the equivalent of trying to eat an elephant in one go.

So here’s what I recommend you do instead.

We are now well into the 4th quarter of 2015.

Set your business two relatively modest online marketing goals for the last day of December. Perhaps you want to get started on, or grow your audience on, a particular platform; Maybe you want to start blogging regularly. Or maybe you want to increase the conversions on your online advertising.

Then draw up a three-month plan.

Each week, schedule one activity that will get you closer to your goal.

Take a bite out of that elephant.

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I find that this incremental approach works brilliantly for us here at Brainstorm. Working in three-month chunks is far more manageable than working a year ahead.

We have a three-month plan not only for our marketing, but for our overall business development.

I even know people who have three-month plans for their personal lives, taking a structured approach to their own personal / family development!

So -- What’s in your three-month online marketing plan?.

Miriam Shaviv is author of the What's Holding Back Your Online Marketing? Checklist and the Boomerang Method Cheat Sheet. She is director of content at Brainstorm Digital, which engineers online sales funnels that deliver enquiries, leads and sales. You can follow her on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

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