How to Turn a Great Idea into Cash - Strategic Marketing Planning for Success


For most of us, our heads are full of great ideas. Whether it is a hot marketing concept to increase student retention, or a new promotion you want to display on your school’s website, for most martial arts school owners a lack of ideas isn’t really the problem. The problem is that every idea starts off great, but once you start going into planning aspects of bringing an idea to life you find that it is extremely difficult, or you just plain don’t know how to do it.

I remember when the first digital cameras started to trickle into the market I told myself, “Somebody should make digital frames to hold those photos as Jpegs.” 3 years later digital photo frames had hit the market and the company that had created them were making lucrative amounts of money. Now, you might say that my idea was wholly unrealistic, which I agree, because I not only lacked the capital to start such an endeavour, but also, the technological capabilities, the resources and man power, the partnerships with the right businesses and distributors, and most importantly the lack of will. But, if you look at it from a different perspective, somebody with the same idea was able to bring that particular concept into reality and make money from it as well.

Everything that we look at today, whether it is the computer screen you are looking at to read this article, or the e-mail server you are going to use to forward this article to your friends, is the product of an idea. Deep within the corporations and businesses of the world are the fat cats who are greedily taking ideas, turning them into a product and selling it to people like me and you. Now, how does this translate to a small business like a martial arts school?

Well, whether you are a small business or a large business it takes a certain level of planning in order to do something. Why? Because through planning you are able to create a step by step outline of what needs to be done in order to achieve a goal, much like when a white belt first starts training he or she sees the other belts that need to be achieved in order to reach a black belt. In the same way businesses take an idea, create steps that need to be accomplished in order for an idea to turn into gold.

I am going to outline 5 steps in order to take a marketing concept and turn it into a successful campaign:

1. Scope:

Scope is one of the most important things any business needs to take into consideration before taking an idea and turning into something. Before you even put anything on paper think about the three most important things you need in order to make this idea successful. That being, Money, Time, and Will. Money and Time are objective so you can easily gauge how much you are willing to spend and how much of your time you are going to sacrifice. Will is completely subjective, but no less important than Time and Money. Remember, with any great idea the first initial reaction is a high level of anticipation, excitement and eagerness, but remember that this is the “honeymoon phase.” Keep in mind that you have a lot of work to do and a lot of setbacks to encounter, which will no doubt, curb the initial enthusiasm you started with.

2. Objectives, Objectives, Objectives:

Now that you’ve determined your scope you want to put something on paper. This is where you idea becomes a project. The first thing you need to determine is your objectives. Start with the most general one, which is to take your idea, in this case a great marketing scheme for your website, and determine what objectives you wish to accomplish by implementing this idea. Remember, you objectives should be realistic and in the scope that you set for yourself. For example, a general objective could be to increase your free trial students to 15-20 students per month, or to build a prospect list of 1000 students, or to simply add a revenue stream of $5000.00 per month to your business. Whatever it is, you should have at 3 objectives for each project. Objectives can overlap so try to envision all the things that could or you want to happen by implementing your idea.

3. A to Z Planning and Resource Allocation:

This is one of the most important parts of project planning. Look at each objective and see what steps need to be done from start to finish, or A to Z, in order for a objective to be reached. Now, plan time for each step to be completed. Some steps might take more than others, and multiple steps can be completed on a single day. What I would suggest is to print out a calendar view (this can be done in Microsoft Word by using a calendar template) and writing down each step according to the date it should be finished. Also at this time you want to assign tasks if you are working with somebody else, or if you are working by yourself, determine what other tasks outside of the project might conflict with your project. Once you’ve done that for each objective your calendar should tell you what tasks you need for that day. This is where most people lose steam, because in doing the small menial tasks they lose focus on the bigger picture. Make sure you are able to step back and view your work so that you don’t lose direction and overall focus.

The second part of this step is resource allocation. How much do you want to spend and how much of your time, or your employee’s time do you want spend? Always allow some flexibility in terms of money you want to spend, but a good project manager always comes under budget without diminishing the quality or neglecting any of the major objectives. Because small businesses such as martial arts schools have smaller operating budgets, see where you can be thrifty on certain tasks or materials that don’t affect the overall quality of the project. When using a service such as a printer or a mass e-mail sending service do your research on different companies, as there is somebody always willing to do it cheaper and faster.

4. 30, 60, 90 Day Out Analysis:

While working on your project make sure you take the time to analyze the project and see if your tasks are still focused on the objectives you laid out. In most cases, as you begin to work on the tasks you’ll find a better way to do things or realize that some things just can’t be done. This may call for a reorganization of your major objectives, which is fine. Just make sure you take the time to reassess your direction and focus. In most cases, you’ll end up nowhere near what your original idea was, but that just puts the case in point that reality and ones thoughts are often two completely different things.

5. Return on Investment (ROI) and Marketing Alignment:

You’ve completed your project, your tasks are done or awaiting completion, and you are ready to implement your idea. How are you going to determine if your idea was success? In most cases, if your project is fairly small you’ll be able to track whatever objectives you set out through Excel or Word. However, if one your objectives was to track the number of prospective leads your idea attracted, you need to have something in place to track exactly how many prospective students came directly through your idea. Most companies use a client resource management system or software for this. If your operation is large enough this may be a significant investment that you may want to pursue. Otherwise, Excel is also a good option, but remember that as you collect more and more information you eventually want to create a database of information that will help you determine future projects, client behaviour and more.

Return on Investment is very easy to calculate. Whether you use Quickbooks or Excel, all you need to do is add up all the costs that went into the project or whatever was completed in Step 3. If you can also try to add in costs that weren’t measured in step 3, such as the cost in time of you and your employees working on the project as well. This way you will get a more accurate representation of how successful your idea was in dollar figures. Getting any return information may take a while so make sure you analyze your project 30 days after you implement it. After 30 days, if there is no return make sure you analyze why it isn’t working and make changes you think are necessary or maybe scrap the project altogether. If your project is working and bringing in a good return, let it do its thing and reap the benefits of your hard work.

Where does marketing alignment fit in in all of this? Let’s say your project was successful and brought in a lot of revenue and you are eager to start your next marketing project. Marketing alignment ensures that you build off the momentum of the last project. Remember the “Whaaazzzupp!” commercials that Bud Light used to run incessantly. Well, the set of commercials that followed the original “Whaaazzzupp!” commercial were building off the success and momentum of the first one. Make sure that if your original idea was successful try to build off it by repackaging it in a new form or making some small tweaks here and there.

Once you’ve completed these 5 steps what you will have is a very strategic marketing project plan that gives logical steps on how to take a good idea and turn it into a strong marketing initiative. It takes into consideration the main things that a business should be worried about: time, money and resources, and it tracks the performance of the initiative so a business owner can determine whether or not they are wasting their time and money.

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