Guest Post by Chris Woodward, My PR Tools

If you want your marketing and PR campaign to be effective in driving sales you need to start with a good foundation—with your goals for growing your business. You can’t really identify the target market that you want to reach with your marketing and PR efforts until you know what your business goals are.

This sounds so obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many small business owners jump in with a scatter-shot approach to their marketing and PR campaign, without really taking their business goals into consideration first.

To get started in building this foundation for your marketing plan, ask yourself the following questions; brainstorm with your staff and business partners.

GOALS FOR GROWING YOUR BUSINESS

1. Which areas of your business do you want to grow?
2. Where are the (geographic) work opportunities?
3. Where is the next big growth area in products and services?
4. What opportunities do you see coming down the pipeline in the next three, five, or ten years?

YOUR SERVICES AND PRODUCTS

5. Do you need to beef up your overall company identity or penetrate a particular market?
6. What existing or new services or products do you want to promote?
7. Which of your company’s services will open the door to clients purchasing other services from you?

YOUR TARGET MARKET

8. Whom do you want to reach with your marketing and PR efforts: who is your ideal client; who are your best referral sources?

Once you have a good idea of your goals for growing your business, you’ll be able to go to the next step, developing the key messages for your marketing ant PR campaign to reach your target market. For help in crafting your key messages, see my blog post “Developing Your Key Marketing Messages.”
For more small business marketing and PR tips, go to my website, www.myprtools.com, and sign up for my free report: “8 Key Steps to Small Business Success.”

About the Author
Chris Woodward founded My PR Tools to bring the power of PR to small businesses. Her affordable personal coaching package and easy-to-follow step-by-step DIY guides to marketing and PR are the culmination of her years of experience as a corporate PR consultant. Find out more about My PR Tools at www.myprtools.com; info@myprtools.com.