I know — I can’t believe I’m writing to tell you how to outsource your DIYMarketing!  I mean the point is to save money by doing it yourself!  Well, you will be doing the important parts yourself.  I’m going to show you how to create a DIYMarketing system for all those things that you’re just not able to do.

FIRST — What NOT to Outsource

Don’t outsource the strategic thinking behind your marketing strategy.  Only you can make the decision about who your ideal customer is and what ‘s important to them.

Don’t outsource market research.  You will probably want to do some online survey research to get the details of what your customers want confirmed.  Online Surveys are certainly a DIY Marketing project.  I recommend the folks over at Survey Analytics.  I’ve been using their QuestionPro product for YEARS and have also used their IdeaScale crowd sourcing tool as well as their newest app SurveySwipe — the only way to get feedback from your customers via smart phone.

Don’t outsource your marketing goals, objectives and planning. While it’s a great idea to talk to a marketing expert or consultant, they can’t really come up with a plan for you without your heavy participation.  If you’re not sure about where to begin, use my Signature Strenth ™ Worksheet to get your thoughts and ideas organized.  When you’re ready to create a marketing plan, try this one-page marketing plan template.

Don’t Outsource Your Ideas. You can already feel the transition happening.  You’ve got goals, objectives and plans and now it’s time for some ideas on how to capitalize on them.  If you got consulting help with the planning, get some input and help on ideas on how to make it happen.  Of course you can DIY those ideas by simply searching for solutions to your goals on Google.  I just did this myself.  I wanted to improve my web site traffic and performance and searched on the term “reduce bounce rate” and I got lots of great articles that contained idea after idea that I liked, but didn’t know how to implement.

How to Get Ready to Outsource — Write a Project Description

Once you have your ideas and tasks, you’re almost ready to hand them off to someone to help you implement.  I say almost because there is one important step left in the process — writing out exactly what you want the person to do.

Taking the time to actually write out the project or the task will help you in two ways:

1. You will have a procedure written that you can hand off to someone the next time.
2. This will alert you to any areas of your task that are unclear or may cause you or your team problems.

What to put in your project description:

1. Give the project a name — you can use this in emails with your team to keep your communications organized
2. Objective – What are you trying to accomplish.   State your project from the big picture down.  For example, “I’m developing a subscription web site for fly fisherman.  200 articles need to be transferred from files into WordPress.”  This gives the person working on your project both the big picture and the detailed task.  Knowing this will allow both of you to work toward achieving the goal and not just focusing on the task at hand.
3. Procedures — It really helps to have actually done “round 1″ of your project yourself so that you can then tell someone else what you want them to do.  Not only that, doing this with the intent of writing a procedure will alert YOU to any obstacles that might pop up.
4. Use video or screenshots -Since many of my projects require people to work on the computer, I’ve been using Jing (a free screen capture tool from TechSmith).  You just select your screen and record your voice over the video of what you are doing and how to do it.  This saves huge amounts of time and mis-understnadings.

Where to get qualified help

I’ve used Guru.com and eLance.com.  Both of these are good sources that have been around a while.  My latest discovery is oDesk.com.  A friend mentioned the service to me and I’ve been working with them ever since.  I have to say that you can get help at any level and at any price.

Another benefit to laying out your tasks in terms of procedures is that you will be able to differentiate between tasks that are big and tasks that are small.  It’s best to identify several small tasks that you can use to test your potential team member.  Pick tasks that are fairly well defined with a specific beginning and clearly defined end.  Another tactic you might try is to give the same small task to several people and see which ones you prefer working with or which ones deliver a product that you are most satisfied with.

What I learned by outsourcing my DIY Marketing Projects

I learned that DIY Marketing doesn’t mean doing everything yourself.  It means creating high quality products at the best price point.

I learned that you can’t outsource your thinking — that you must do for yourself.

I learned that there are wonderful team members out there who can help you achieve your marketing goals without breaking the bank.

I learned that building a business doesn’t mean doing EVERYTHING yourself, rather it requires building a turnkey process and system that delivers value.  Only you can do that — and that makes you a smart DIY Marketer.

When my husband and I first started dating we had a fight that could have ended the relationship.  Instead, he taught me something that has made a tremendous improvement on how I travel and how I think about marketing plans.

A Personal Story

We were on our way to Washington DC and he asked me to look at the map and tell him which way to go.  I had this glassy look in my eyes as I stared at the map, twisting and turning the HUGE piece of paper and trying to make sense of where we were and where to go next.  ”Are you telling me you don’t know how to read a map?” He said in utter disbelief.  ”Yup , I don’t know how to read a map.”  I replied.  He looked at me and asked how in the world I was able to travel and be in sales if I didn’t know how to read a map.  I said that I got directions and stopped to ask for directions if that didn’t work.  (I could make some snide comment here about guys NOT asking for directions and maps serving as a crutch for their ego — but I will refrain – because I am wrong on this.)

Once we arrived at our destination, and over drinks, he took the time to show me how to read a map.  And his patience and lesson paid off the very next week.  As I was driving to the airport (and running late) the traffic came to a stop due to construction.  Instead of panicking, I pulled out my map and noticed that I could get off the next exit and take a parallel road straight to the airport.  I never would have known about this if he hadn’t taken the time to teach me how to read a map.  As I took my seat in the airplane I realized that a marketing plan wasn’t really a plan — it was a map!

Outline YOUR Marketing Map on January 25th

Ely Delaney is the founder of “My Business Marketing Mentor” a training site dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs get really smart on marketing!

On January 25, 2011, at 12pm Pacific and 3pm Eastern Ely will be sharing his Marketing Map program with us.  This isn’t your ordinary marketing plan.  This is more like a turnkey marketing system.  Ely follows a 5 step process where only the first two steps are more your traditional plan.  The last three steps are the real powerhouse.

The biggest mistake we small business owners make is that we don’t follow-up or follow-through.  We have great and creative ideas, but then putting them in action is often overwhelming and requires a lot more detail than we planned on.

Here are Ely’s 5 Steps to a turnkey marketing system:

1. Planning
2. Prioritizing
3. Systematizing
4. Automate
5. Repeat

This is why I find Ely’s program so terrific.  (I’m following it myself you know)  The really big deal is learning how to take the hard work you did in choosing an ideal customer, finding out what’s important to them and then putting that information IN ACTION.  This is where the systematizing and automating come in.

Take a look at the video interview I did with Ely (in the upper right sidebar on this page).

This is a FREE Webinar – so REGISTER TODAY!

Figuring out what your market share is can be difficult.  But it doesn’t have to be.  In this 3-part series of posts, I’m going to give you some practical ways that you can figure out your share of the market.  These articles are also featured in a white paper which features these two methods of calculating market share that you can download at BizCompare.

You’re the CEO of as growing B2B business. While things have been going great, you don’t really know the true potential for your company. Specifically:

What is the size of the market that you play in?

What is your current market share?

The answers to these two questions are the foundation for your Marketing planning and the challenge is how to answer these questions and have confidence in the numbers.

In this series of 3 articles, I will present two scenarios that any CEO or marketing/sales leader of a small business can employ to determine market size and/or market share numbers.

Today’s article and our first scenario is what I call the “cheap and cheerful” solution that costs nothing but a bit of time. It answers the question:

• What are all the general industries to which your customers belong?
• Approximately, what is the size of your market?

The second scenario is more involved (and will be covered over two article publications) but will give you much more detailed information such as:

What are all the specific industries to which your customers belong?

• More specifically, what is the size of your market?
• What are the predominant “firmographics” for your customers (i.e. sales, employees, etc.)
• What is the profile of your best customers?
• How many prospects match that profile?

Let’s get started!

Determining Industries and Market Size – The Cheap and Cheerful Method

Here’s a 4 step process that won’t take you longer than a few hours to complete. When you are done, you’ll know approximately what industries you play in and the market size. Here goes:

1. Generate a short list of some of your CURRENT customers.

This needs to be a list that is manageable but also large enough for some commonalities to emerge (more on that later). I recommend you get a list of 20-25 of your largest customers and another 20-25 of your fastest growing customers*.  You need their company name, street  address, city, state, zip and phone. Presumably, you would like to have dozens more just like them. Put all this information in a spreadsheet.

* While I suggest a total of 40-50 customers, if possible I would advise trying to use more customers in your analysis. This will just increase the sample size, ergo the accuracy level.

1. Indentify the industry to which your customers belong.

This next step will take a few hours because you need to do some high level research on each of your customers. However, this is an easy task so if you have an assistant, a sales administrator or any person with some smarts and eye for detail, so you can delegate the task. Objective: You want to indentify the NAICS code for each customer.

One customer at a time, cut & paste the customer’s name and address into Google. Here’s an example for a fictitious company: Sample Company 1234 Anywhere Ave Sacramento, California 95838. A Google search would show a result as follows:

Look for search results for your customer in business directories (as highlighted above) like BizCompare, Manta, AllBusiness or others.

Next, click on one (or more) of the business directory links and look for the company’s NAICS code. Example:

The number “561499” is the official NAICS numeric code. The words “All Other Business Support Services” is the official NAICS description. Record the number and description in separate columns in the spreadsheet beside each customer name. Repeat for all customers. You now have 40-50 of your best customers all in one spreadsheet ready for analysis.

1. Now, indentify the DOMINANT industries by looking for industry patterns.

Go to the NAICS description column and apply a “sort” or “filter” function. Both actions will deliver the same result which is to cluster companies by NAICS description.  Now, perhaps for the first time, you are looking at objective information telling you the specific industries to which your best customers belong.  What is the data telling you? How many unique industries are there? What are the industries with the most occurrences? Starting with the ones that occur the most you now have your target industries to help fuel your growth.

1. Look for the total number of companies in your target industries.

Now that you have your top NAICS industry description, you want to find out how many companies are in those same industries. You have a couple of approaches to choose from:

• You can do a Google search using the industry phrase (“5614999 – All Other Business Support Services”) and, again, look for sites like BizCompare, Manta, AllBusiness or a government site like the U.S Census Bureau. Or
• You can simply go directly to these sites and search/browse for your target industry.

Either way, in short order, you will be presented with the number of companies for that industry. Example:

Note: When looking for number of companies in a specific industry, there are bound to be some variations between sites and database. So I suggest that you look at 3 or more sites to the see the number of companies on each site, take an average or select a number you’re most comfortable with.

Complete! You now have:

• Your dominant industry classifications
• Your approximate market size

If you are looking for sales leads or for a marketing list, you are now equipped to go to any business list provider and request a quote for a list of qualified companies. By providing them with the NAICS industry classifications you just researched, you are significantly narrowing the field of targets, probably saving yourself money along the way by not targeting un qualified prospects.

Next up!

Tomorrow and the next day, I will discuss a methodology to do this same analysis but with more precision providing greater insight.

To see the entire text of these three articles RIGHT NOW, click on the following link:

Determining B2B Market Size and Market Share – A free BizCompare White Paper.

I’m currently in the process of pulling together a marketing plan.  It’s recently dawned on me that I hadn’t really done a “Marketing Plan Document” in YEARS!  But that doesn’t mean I hadn’t done a marketing plan.  In fact, I’ve done several of them – for myself and for clients.

But something has changed — let’s see if you see the change too.  Marketing plans have been going “interactive” over the years.  About the only time you’ve got to get something down on paper or at least as a formal file is when you are forecasting and budgeting — but the rest seems to have gone this interactive digital route.  Two things have happened as a result; first, you don’t really feel like you’ve been planning because you’ haven’t slaved over this document.  And second, it’s become a lot more fun to plan, implement, make changes and see the results of your plans materialize so quickly.

Here is my marketing plan aresenal and how I’ve been making it interactive for years now:

1. The SWOT Analysis:  There’s nothing that will get you focused on getting and keeping your best customers like a conversation about what’s actually happened over the last year or so — and how you can work with your strengths to differentiate and come up with new offers.
2. My next step is to use Marketing Plan Pro Software, developed by John Jantsch (Duct Tape Marketing)  and Tim Berry (Palo Alto Software) two individuals with enough combined experience in market and business planning that put great plans together.  I LOVE this software.  I love that there’s a quick and dirty 30 minute plan where you can collect your ideas and general strategies all the way to the big encilada plan that would blow the banks away.  You get to choose.
3. Assuming that you’ll be implementing this plan with more people than yourself, I’d recommend a couple fun ways to keep it real and interactive.  I’ve been using Central Desktop online collaboration with a client or two and I really like it.  You open a workspace, pull your team together and start uploading files, calendars, documents — just about everything it takes to pull togegther a coordinated effort and keep your plan alive.

I guess that’s the big message here — it’s all about keeping your marketing plan fresh and alive.  In the past we would all complain about how we wrote documents and they sat on shelves.  There’s no excuse for that these days.  Go ahead – create documents — but then bring them to life using these great tools.

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What are you doing with all those digital or virtual relationships that you’ve built up over the months or years on social media?  If you’re still asking yourself the question of how social media is going to make you money or help you reach more customers, chances are you’re not doing enough to make that happen.  Not because you don’t want to – but because it takes a little practice to figure out just how social media can work and fit into your marketing plan.

In our tweet chat on the relationship between social media and PR, there was consensus that the two worked together, enhancing the strength of the other; social media with authentic relationships and PR with communicating a message and a story.

Yet we all know that social media creates a value beyond that, but we haven’t quite worked out the leverage formula.  I’m going to start one here.  Please feel free to add on and provide your tips in the comment area.

1. Set marketing goals around your social media tools.  First comes the goal, then comes the tool that helps you achieve it.  Once you’ve gone through that process, you can look at the tool and see in what ways you can leverage that tool to reach your marketing goals.  For example; one of my marketing goals is to be a resource of expertise for my clients.  I primarily use LinkedIn for this objective.  So, I make sure that I have some kind of relationship with my LinkedIn contacts. I want to know who they are, what they look like, what they are good at.  I’d like to have a conversation with them over the phone, etc.  I want to know who they are and how I can refer them.
2. Conduct “referral meetings” online or on the phone.  Social media will increase your sphere of influence – but not if you haven’t taken the extra step of getting to know the people you’re connected to.  The easiest way to do this is daily.  If you reach out to someone you don’t know and want to add them to your LinkedIn or Facebook account, then make sure you schedule a phone or live meeting if you can.
3. Look for opportunities to work together. This is something that’s often overlooked.  It’s one thing to talk about what each of you is looking for, but another to talk about what opportunities you can create together by merging your areas of expertise.

I’ve been putting this process to work over the last few months and it has yielding more opportunities that I can schedule in the short term.

How have YOU leveraged your social media relationships to create new opportunities?

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Download of Tweet Chat : The Living Marketing Plan

Have you adjusted your marketing plan for this economy?

Did you see it coming?

Did you get your budget slashed?  What have you done about it?

Do you have a quick and dirty marketing planning system that you use?

What’s the most creative adjustment that you’ve made to your makreting plan and how did it turn out?

All these topics and more on Monday’s #DIYMKT chat

Join us Mondays 11:30am – 12:30pm EST.

I’ve never been one of these people who gets all passionate about causes.  Don’t get me wrong; I care about the environment, I care about animals and little children all over the world — I just don’t have that special tug at the heart and mind that inspires me to get on a soapbox about that and commit time and money to the project.

UNTIL NOW!  I’ve Found my Cause and….

IT’S YOU and YOUR Business Success in 2009!

It dawned on me when I was putting together the press release for the DIYMarketers and Toilet Paper Entrepreneur 3-Sheet Strategy Workshop (Which I’m sure you’ve registered for already — I mean at $49 for having your strategy DONE for 2009 — killer deal).

I didn’t want to promote this thing as “Register for MY workshop—”  Because — I realized it wasn’t really ABOUT ME and the success of the workshop — it was really about YOU!  I’m not just saying that either.  Of course I want to be successful in my business — so do you.  But NONE of us can succeed if we all lay down in this economy.  We can’t succeed if we’re still running the same marketing process and strategy — because the environment has changed.  LOTS of things have changed in the last year.  Government has turned over; what was important last year isn’t important this year.

YOU CAN’T BE RUNNING THE SAME STRATEGY – so don’t even think about it.  If that’s the case – then WHAT?

That brings me right back around to my cause – which I would appreciate if you’d spread around (only if you feel the same way).

I’m looking for anywhere from 50 to 100 businesses who want to be heroes in this economy.  If you’re saying that can’t be you – well then it won’t be and Mike Michalowicz (Donnie Deutsch’s small biz expert — yeah, you read that right)  and I will be featuring someone else.

Let me talk about how I envision this project:

1. Register for the site and download the 3-Sheet Strategy Worksheet.  This is freakin’ FREE – so download the sheet and give it a try.  If you’re like me and feel lonely through this process – well, then join us for the TPE 3-Sheet Strategy Sessions.
2. Small Businesses register for the 3-Sheet Strategy.  To have a crack at this, you have to register for this session.  It’s a 3-hour tele-seminar on Feb 6.  It costs $49 (and if you use “DIYM” in the promo code you’ll get another $5 off.  You’ll have a strategy and plan done in 3 hours.  But forget all that — you’ll be networked in with a community of people who will want to help you – we will work together we will help each other — straight from the heart.  A_holes need not apply – we don’t want you.  We want people who are committed to growing their business and sharing their ideas with others.
3. Join the 1 on 1 coaching sessions - that’s 30 days of 1 on 1 coaching with Mike, Ivana and anyone else we think you might need to talk to. (pssst – take a look at the right hand margin of this page – — see it?)  CLICK.  Once you have your plan – we will actually help you work it, hold you hand, kick your ass — whatever is required to make you successful.  As far as Mike and I are concerned failure is NOT an option.  Once you commit to this process – we are here for you.
4. Implement your marketing plan on DIYMarketers. The next step will be to implement your plan on DIYMarketers.  I have a forum all set up for the people who hear the same calling of success in 2009.  I’ve got vendors and resources (my special friends) that have a stake in your success as well.

Now comes the fun part of my vision…You guys know I’m a guest expert on Small Business Trends. I write book reviews, I pull together DIY Marketing articles for the Marketing Tips Section sponsored by HP and I’m also a guest expert via SmallBizTrends on the AMEX open Forum blog.  All of these blogs need CONTENT and stories about businesses that are doing it right.  Business owners all over the world want to know what works, what you’re doing, why and HOW.

Why shouldn’t those stories be about YOU?  I don’t know – but the only way they CAN be about YOU is if you let me know who you are!  So this is my call to action for those of you that want to OPT OUT of this economy -

Pass this post on – tell your business buddies – register, participate and play the most exciting game of all – the one where you, your business, your friends and family have a kick ass successful and fun 2009!

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Here’s a 5-Minute Marketing Plan Process that you can run every day.  It might feel rather strange at first, but I promise you if you start your day with these questions and end your day with a de-brief you will be amazed at how much control you will have over your marketing results.

Take Control of Your Marketing Process

The key to being successful with your marketing plan and process is to focus and take control.  But that’s easier said than done because “life” is happening and tries to convince us that other external things are in control — and not us and our goals.

That simply isn’t true.

While you do not control your customers’ actions; you control how you react to those actions and you contribute to those actions. Here is a sure-fire-way to regain control of your actions and ultimately your marketing results.

Decide on a Single “Way of Being”

The first step is to simply decide “How You’re Going to Be” on this day.  Refer to your marketing plan.

1. What goals and tasks to you have set?
2. What type of attitude do you need to have to complete those goals?
3. In what ways will you exhibit this attitude and behavior today to achieve those goals?

Here is an example”

I have a goal to complete three blog posts today.

To complete three quality blog posts, I will need to have an open mind, see opportunities for learning and apply them to writing.

That will be my goal for today.

“Today I chose to have an open mind and see opportunities for learning.”

What’s Holding You Back?

The reason we often don’t achieve what we set out to do is because things get in our way.  And the biggest thing that gets in our way is — US.

Each of us has this wonderful little conversation within ourselves that talks us out of getting something done and comes up with excuses as to why it didn’t get done.  So Just say those:

• The thing that’s holding me back is: [insert the real reason you don't want to do this].

If you’re struggling with that reason – you’ll need to sit quietly and listen to the little voice inside your head.  It’s that small whisper that says “You don’t like writing about accounting.” Maybe the voice says “I’m not a good writer, why am I doing this?”

What will you do when that obstacle hits?

The next most obvious step is to plan what you will do when you hit that obstacle that won’t allow you to achieve what you’ve set out to do.

• Call a friend
• Go for a walk
• Close your eyes for 5 minutes

Come up with an attack plan to eliminate the obstacle and get to accomplishing the work at hand.

How Did You Do?

At the end of the day, do a little debrief on how well or poorly you did.  If it went well, acknowledge your accomplishments.

• Make a list of all the times you stayed true to what you had decided to do.
• List how you or your program benefited.
• If you didn’t do so well, list why and what you might have to do the next time.

Get a Support Group

This process works best in a group.  If you’re at a company – get your team together over coffee and run this exercise.  It doesn’t need to take more than 15 minutes (depending on the size of your group).

This will keep you on task – energize you and help you achieve your goals.

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