With the New Year upon us, do you have an actionable marketing plan in place for your LBM business?

As marketers, we are concerned with the interaction between the business and the marketplace. Most successful marketers have a process to provide focus in developing well-grounded strategies, to make strategic decisions. I like to think of strategies as the sequence of events necessary in order to produce the desired outcome.

If you haven’t developed a plan yet, here are some things to consider as part of the process:

• What are your growth objectives for the business in 2018 and beyond?
• Are you able to describe your growth strategy (e.g. new customers, new channels, taking share from a competitor, new products or services, growing your current footprint)?
• What are the biggest challenges your LBM business is facing?
• What are the biggest opportunities to grow the business?
• Is this consistent with your current approach or are you planning any broad changes?
• What does your business pipeline look like?
• Can you describe your target customer (s)?
• Do you know what their business challenges are; do you know their goals for next year and how you can help?
• What is your value proposition and is it resonating with your customers/prospects?
• If not, what recommendations for improvement do you have?
• Who are you mostly competing against and are you differentiating your business offer?
• What has been the most effective in helping to generate new opportunities in yourmarket/channel?
• How can you best reach customers and prospects going forward (e.g. print, email, newsletter,website, PR, events, referral, etc.)?
• What is the best way to promote your products/services and how could that positively impactyour business?
• What types of support are needed from marketing to help achieve your business goals?

The most import question I always try to answer… if you can do one thing that would have the biggest impact on your business next year what would it be?

Having answers to these types of questions, can mitigate your business risk, and enable the development and implementation of an actionable marketing strategy.

This blog was written by Jack Leary Vice President & Partner at Impact 180 Consulting Group & Lumber Contacts Inc. Feel free to contact Jack at, [email protected].