Planning is essential for your business

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Today’s market demands ever more fluidity, which requires leaders to have a clear path forward while still being able to embrace rapid change and take risks. Mark Zuckerberg once said, “In a world that is changing so rapidly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks . ”

And they were right! Of course, the risk mentioned is the calculated, planned risk. The one that involves the strategic management of the company and the direction of the business.

However, what we see a lot are unwanted risks that harm companies' results. These risks often arise from a lack of planning.

And planning is one of the most basic and fundamental points. Not that it’s easy! However, developing and executing the right strategy, focusing on people before process and toolsets, will likely result in much greater success at the end of the journey – both for the organization and for the employees.

Planning is nothing more than a kind of compass for egypt whatsapp data the company. Its role is not to predict the future, but rather to define the path to be followed, relating the strategies involved and the expected results. And here we want to talk more specifically about marketing planning.

In the reality of most small and medium-sized businesses, many entrepreneurs are hesitant about the idea of ​​drawing up an annual marketing plan because they believe it will be too complex, laborious and time-consuming. This is exacerbated if management is too centralized, making it difficult or even impossible for more people to collaborate in this development.

The consequence of this is that the company is swallowed up by routine and effective marketing and sales actions are limited to meeting urgent and immediate needs. The results are usually unsatisfactory or, worse, are not even measured.

If your company is currently in a situation similar to the one described above, at this point in time when the first quarter of 2018 has already come to an end, there is probably no marketing plan for the following quarters.

Given this scenario, it is important to start emergency planning now. If you don't have anything yet, the ideal is to start with something very basic. And one of the most common and basic ways to start formatting a marketing plan is by analyzing commemorative dates, themes and even holidays.

There are markets in which some dates must receive special attention and well in advance. As an extreme case (but not impossible), what will happen if, for example, a toy store starts to think about Children's Day only on October 8th? Various problems and terrible sales results are what will probably happen. This is because they could discover that many items are not competitive because they should have been negotiated in advance and in larger quantities with suppliers. Or, they could discover that toys that are in high demand on the market are not available in their stock. Depending on the intended marketing action, they may realize that it is too late to rehearse any campaign. And the worst part: the competition will certainly have been making a lot of noise for days and will already have the attention of most of the market.

Planning is essential
In this quick exercise of imagination, we can see how a simple action – thinking in advance about a relevant date for your market – can represent a real tragedy in sales if not executed properly.

Of course, in this example we are talking about a date that is absurdly obvious for the market in question. But reality has shown us that many, many companies have been focusing on equally obvious and important dates – such as Mother's Day and Christmas – too late. This drastically reduces the possibilities because it impacts financial planning, the time to create advertising and marketing, and there is often no time for suppliers to deliver, for example, promotional materials (such as printed material, POS materials, etc.).

If we talk about e-commerce, then this anticipation of important dates must be even greater. After all, it is not just about selling in advance, but also about selling in time for the product to arrive before the special date in question. Depending on the media effort, it may be necessary to prepare an extra contingent in vital areas that usually become bottlenecks – such as customer service or shipping.

Since this is something basic but if neglected it can compromise or even make any marketing and sales action unfeasible, we have prepared a complete calendar with the next quarters of 2018 so that you don't miss any more opportunities and make the most of it.

In this material, we list several dates. It is important that you carefully evaluate which ones may actually be relevant to your market and which ones have the potential to drive sales. If you sell online (and if you don't, what are you waiting for? Hehe) we have added some highlights for dates that are highly relevant to online stores.

So, let's go! Just click on the banner below. After registering and downloading the material, meet with your team and evaluate what is relevant for your company. After defining the dates that will be worked on, think about the actions that could be taken and set a deadline for everything to be decided and approved.