Melanie
Welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast for all decision makers and action takers. Take it away, Esther.
Esther
And welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today, we're talking about planning for the next quarter, something that every business needs to do and needs to review frequently. So let's get to it.
Melanie
And just for those of you that are watching us on a video right now, please note the merch. The merch. We have merch, so you can buy our merch from our Etsy site. And we also have downloads.
Esther
Find it on our website.
Melanie
We also have useful downloads on there, so you're absolutely welcome to get those as well. So planning for the next quarter. It doesn't really matter what time of year you listen to this podcast. There's going to be, I hope, some plans for your future. Now, myself and Esther, we spend a lot of time planning content for ourselves and for our clients on a regular basis. And one of the best ways to start is to basically drill you for information. And one of the first things we normally ask for is what your goals and your objectives are. We can't really do anything for ourselves or for anybody else unless we know what's the ultimate aim? Where do you want to end up at the end of that quarter or heck, even this time next year?
Esther
Yeah, and that can be increase in number of followers. It can be increase in number of followers, it can be increased sales. It can be increased views. It can be anything that you feel is a goal that you want to put forward to your team or to your as part of your plan, that in this time, three months, I want to be seen by more people. I want to have a larger audience in insert country here, I want to I want to be known as an expert in this field. I want to have published six blogs. I want to be recognised as a great speaker. Whatever those goals are, they need to be written down and given to the people that need them most. First off yourself, because once you have a goal and have it written down, then you're more likely to achieve it. That's a given. That has been proven. That's not just us saying it. It has been proven that writing down your goals can help you achieve them. You then need to let other people know, whether that be your accountability partner, whether Whether it be your social media manager, whether it be your image creator, your VA, your team. And if you are a team of one, then have a meeting with yourself and let yourself know without a doubt what your goals are for the next three months, six months. We're going for the quarter because three months is viable, it's doable. It's not long term so much. It's what can I do in the next three months to reach this goal. And you might not reach it, but you will take steps towards it.
Melanie
And another way to make sure that you reach your objectives and your goals is to have KPIs, key performance indicators. And I think it's almost even more important, especially if you're a team of one, to understand what those KPIs are. Just today, I finished off a training course with a client who was doing my supported Digital Marketing Strategy Training course. Yes, I am plugging it, Esther.
Esther
Fine. I'm still wondering why it's such a long title. But anyway, it works.
Melanie
SEO, It works every time. But no, we finish that today. And one of the first things I did is, because it's over 12 hours and we did this over a few months, is I did the benchmark with them on the first session, and I did where we ended up today after a few months. And it was good. We It definitely went the right direction. We excelled in the areas that we expected to Excel in, and we saw growth in every single platform, which is fantastic. So just simple benchmarks can really make a big difference as long as you're monitoring and tracking them, otherwise they don't work.
Esther
Yeah. And I mean, don't be afraid to start small and aim bigger. There's only one way to grow, and that's by little by little. You could end up meeting those goals within a week, a month. That's perfect, too. They'd just constantly be monitoring them and modify the goals. There's no reason why you can't modify and upgrade your goals throughout the quarter as you go along. So that's our goal setting. So So another thing to bear in mind when you are thinking and planning for your next quarter is to review what worked in the previous quarter.
Melanie
Agreed.
Esther
What have people been talking about? What have people been asking you? What have people been buying? Where are people finding you? All of those things will influence your plan for the next quarter, because if you had started out on on one platform six years ago, and now the majority of your audience is on another platform, is it time to move away from one and focus more on the other? Could you still do both? Or is it time to completely change strategies and embrace a new way of doing things. A new content method is short form video for you. Long form video is writing blogs. All of these things you have to figure out. And it's easy to figure it out. You're not guessing here because they're all in your analytics.
Melanie
So again, it's looking at what's working on or not, measuring KPIs. And I do like the fact that she's made those suggestions there about the places that you can track stuff. So now we've understood our goals or objectives, our measurements, our KPIs, and we're better understanding working or not. Obviously, it'd be great to drop stuff that's not working as well. Let's get down to it.
Esther
Don't be afraid to do that.
Melanie
No, no, don't be.
Esther
Don't be afraid to drop stuff that's not working. There's no point in going, oh, but I've always done... It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
Melanie
So now we've done all that. As we're planning ahead, and so forth, what we've been doing there is doing a bit of both backwards and forwards, looking forward and looking back a bit. Now we need to start strategising. And my best suggestion to you over the next quarter is to, first of all, book your days off. It doesn't matter whether you are a team of one or whether you've got a large team. You better understand your assets if you've got your days off, booked in. It also gives you time to manage your time better. Where do you need to spend your budget more, where you need to prepare your audience better? Because as I've said before, and I'll keep saying it, we're all in the business of managing other people's expectations of us. That's our customers, our suppliers, our peers, and even our family. So make sure to take those days off because even large agencies such as Esther's can burn out if they don't look after the staff. Then put down anything that you've already got planned. Myself and Esther, we've got lots of events booked up over the next quarter between going to awards and events and networking. We've got those already in our diary and booked off. We know that we need to let people know that we're going to these, that there is tickets available or discount codes that we may be able to offer. So that's already in. What else do we need to let our audience know about, Esther?
Esther
We need to let them know about any special days. So for example, in our industry, there's Social Media Day, there's International Podcasting Day, Special Days of the Year. As a cancer survivor, I like to recognise World Cancer Day, things like that that can be added into your strategy, into your social media plan that doesn't look out of place. I mean, there's no point in doing Talk Like a Pirate Day if it's not something that either works with your brand or you as a person, just saying.
Melanie
Yeah. So that's the stuff that we know that's coming up that we're already committed to. Maybe we've already bought our tickets, that thing. But then there may be stuff that you'd like to go to. Maybe they've not put up the dates yet, maybe it's not available online yet, or maybe that you just need to conduct more research to find out about it. We didn't know about all the networks that we go to until we researched them or we heard about them. Maybe there's other conferences conferences, networks, events that you should be going to, and on an ongoing basis, so every quarter, heck even every month, you need to do your search and see, do I need to go there? Is that where I'm going to find my customer?
Esther
Yeah. Yeah. So that's, you're setting your goals. That's looking back, looking forward, planning into your diary, what events you're going to be having when you're not going to be available, even when you're at events, you might not be available for clients. So that's looking back at our goals. That's looking forward to what's coming up. It's checking what's worked. It's managing expectations, because even when you're at events, you might not be able to answer your clients or your clients might decide that they'd like to go to that event as well. Those are all very good things to include in your social plan. When you're planning for the next quarter and you've looked back at what has worked, check the frequency of your posting. See if it's worth posting every day to a certain platform or whether it can, three days a week would be better or whether it's not working at all, like I said earlier. See what time of the day people are most likely to be online to engage with you. All of these things can help you reach your final goal. And don't forget to include call to actions in your social media posts, because if you want to grow your numbers, if you want to grow your followers, if that's one of your goals, then including something like share this with your friends and family could be a good way to increase those goals and reach those goals faster. But don't rely solely on vanity metrics, please. They don't pay the bills.
Melanie
No, they really don't. So what else do we need to plan for the future? Well, one of my favourite, I go back to it all the time, is a SWOT, your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The reason why I mention this is because it means that you're constantly working on the areas that you're maybe lacking or deficient in, your weaknesses and your threats. I hope it also means you're actioning and moving any opportunities that you've not made time for in the past. Now, actioning these things could be getting a virtual assistant, it could be getting extra training, it could be just making sure you're committing a certain amount of time every week or every month, maybe to video creation or content creation. And unless you actually sit down and, objectively, I hope, go through all your weaknesses and threats, you're not really moving anything. You're not changing anything. You keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. And we have done that. Myself and Esther.
Esther
We have.
Melanie
We have both done that. And it doesn't work.
Esther
No, no. But you can get into a rut and get into a situation where it's just easier to get something out rather than getting something out that people want or will react to or will respond to. So posting for the sake of posting or writing a blog for the sake of writing a blog is not a good strategy and not a way to plan for the next quarter.
Melanie
So what do we now do? So we've got all these things done and we're still strategising. So maybe what we need to do now, now we've looked at all these various areas We still haven't actually created content. So far, all we've done is write stuff down.
Esther
Which is good. It's a good plan. It's a good start. It's a good start.
Melanie
Yes. So now maybe think, is there a seasonality that you need to incorporate into your quarter? Every single quarter brings different types of things. Now, I know that in my business, it tends to be quite busy in September, October, especially October, very busy. Then the next really busy time would be interest in January, and people go to purchase in February, March. Then there's another big, a smaller bump around April, May time as people start going, oh, no, it's coming up to the summer and I still haven't. That's for me, for Social Media Training, those are the three higher seasons for my product or services. Doing a seasonality tracker is also worthwhile for you, for your industries. It doesn't matter which industry or space you're in. There will be better times for certain products or certain services to sell or have inquiries about. Maybe look at that as part of your quarter as well.
Esther
Yes. You can also include knowing that you're going to be super busy, you can include things in the previous quarter. Say you know you're going to be busy in February, mention that in the previous quarter so that people maybe be more organised, you'd hope, and book you the previous quarter. If you have a very seasonal business, like your busiest time is Christmas, then you want to start talking about that at least six months in advance. And yes, I do hate people talking about Christmas so early, but it is necessary for marketing because you don't want to be left at the last minute doing all your orders or all your work in the busy period running up to Christmas. You could also look at whether you want to have a theme for your quarter, whether you want to change, maybe have them colour-coded into my tips are this colour, my strategy is this colour, my blog posts are this other colour. Having things like that and colour coding can be a great way to keep you on track. And if you have a team, then they'll know, oh, now we have to have the blog written two weeks in advance so that it's reviewed, so that everything is sorted, so that it can go out.
But why do we not recommend planning for the full year? Because things happen. Things can happen to you to your business in the locality, or even in the world of events.
Melanie
Between economic issues, pandemics, your health. I mean, we've seen it all over the last few years.
Esther
We have. We really have. So planning too far in advance and having it all scheduled out so far in advance, plus some platforms don't let you schedule more than 30 days or three months in advance anyway. I wasn't going to mention who it was, but we all know. Then, you can become blasé about it and go, well, I've got everything sorted, but the platform goes down. Like I said, there's a world emergency and your content wouldn't sit well with people on that day. So you have to be very sensitive to these things and be able to jump into them as and when something major happens, which we're hoping it won't, but we know it probably will.
Melanie
Yeah. So there's nothing wrong with penciling, what you want to do for several quarters. Absolutely not. But I personally-.
Esther
Especially if you're launching something.
Melanie
Oh, yeah. But I personally-.
Esther
You're writing a book, you're going to launch a book.
Melanie
I personally wouldn't prepare actual content until I actually started that quarter, or as I was approaching that quarter, of course.
Esther
Yes, be organised for the quarter before the quarter starts.
Melanie
Yes, don't do it on the day.
Esther
Although you can decide your own quarters. There's nothing to say that your quarter has to be January, February, March, April, May, June. There's nothing to say that your quarter can't be Where the seasons are in June, July, August, being your quarter for summer, for example. It's December, January, February for winter. Exactly. We didn't get one. But December, January, February, It could be a quarter, especially if middle of January is your really, really, really busy period. I'm thinking accountants in the UK. I'm thinking people who have to work to deadlines. So it's all of these things you can decide when your quarter starts. And I put a poll out recently on LinkedIn, and some people work in haves or thirds. So they prefer to lump four months together rather than three months. Or they lump September in with September, October, November, December with quarter four because the summer has been quite quiet and they're really kicking off again in September. So there's lots of ways that you can break down your year and into your strategy.
Melanie
So I'm hoping that that's given you a bit of a kickstart. It doesn't really matter when you're listening to this, whenever your quarter is. This might be a good podcast to actually set aside, save somewhere so that you can come back and refer to it. Obviously, bring your pen and paper and get down what you can. There will be templates that you can get hold of on our Etsy site that might be beneficial. So visit that via our website and check out our templates. There's also blogs available on stomp.ie and on ipagroup.co. We've got a lot of this content available to you online if you prefer to read rather than listen. If there's any other areas that you wish us to cover, any topics that you'd like us to go through, then do let us know through our socials. We love hearing from you guys, and we've also got our email address available on the website as well. And don't forget, you can subscribe to our newsletter. Loads of helpful All tips go out every single week. And that's thanks to Esther because she's the email queen. So that's us for now, but we'll be back next week with another podcast. Have a great week.
Esther
Bye.
Melanie
Do you think when StreamYard create the videos, it will show the moment where I absolutely laughed my eyeballs off? Do you know what happened?
Esther
When you dropped the lid. You dropped the lid. I could hear it.
Melanie
I didn't drop a lid. That was my cat trying to jump from the table onto the cat gym, and they slipped and dropped a book off the side of the table and then was hanging by their nails onto the cat gym, trying to stay on. Bear in mind, this is my three-legged cat, so this made it even funnier.
Esther
Why didn't you pan the camera around so everyone can enjoy it?
Melanie
I would have loved to, but I didn't want to disrupt this, but I was absolutely losing it, seeing this poor cat. That was so funny.
Esther
Poor Mallow.
