By being upfront and completely honest about your budget with your marketing consultant, you will maximize your budget and save time and effort by avoiding research and time spent on pursuing marketing strategies you are never going to use.

A great place to start is to work with a professional marketing consultant to develop a strategic marketing plan for your business.

A marketing plan describes how you are going to attract and retain customers, how you will compete in your niche, and what resources you are going to use to achieve your objectives. It will also outline how you will use your time and your budget to maximize your return on marketing investment.

While not every marketing plan is the same, here are the basic sections or components of a marketing plan:

• Summary
• Goals and objectives
• Business description
• Target market profiles
• Competitor profiles
• Product or service benefits and unique selling points
• Location and home base either online or off
• Pricing strategy
• Marketing action plan
• Budget

You know where you want to go, and luckily you make the right turns, take the right roads, and hit most of the green lights. You’re coasting along on auto-pilot, knowing that someday your dreams will come true.

But what happens if you get lost along the way?

Your marketing plan is your own personal road map, helping you stay on the right course, making continual progress toward your big vision. Think of it as your very own personal small business success compass. That way, if you do get lost or run into a detour, you can review your marketing plan and correct your course to keep you headed in the right direction.

Now, don’t get me wrong. A lot of entrepreneurs and business owners never create a marketing plan and do okay. They are completely happy taking whatever action they feel like, whenever they feel like it, and seeing results steadily trickle in.

But, if you’re anything like me, you don’t want to just do okay. You want to hit a home run and completely knock it out of the ballpark. And, you want to know exactly how to make that happen.

A good marketing plan will do that for you, and a coordinating marketing calendar can help you keep everything on track and on time.

Just remember, that your marketing plan is a living document that may need to be updated and revised as you grow your business. It is not something you stick on a self and look at again in a year.

QUICK TIP: Create a secondary, single page, mini-marketing plan and post it on the wall by your desk. Review it each day to stay motivated and inspired by the progress you are making.

For me, I approach my business in sort of the same way. I decide what I want to achieve, I set a date of completion, and I jump right into the planning and implementation needed to make it happen. Ten years ago, I never would have guessed that I would be running my own business and loving every second of it – It took me a while to figure out I was an entrepreneur.

Yesterday I celebrated my birthday with a fabulous lunch at the Bistro 33 restaurant inside the brand new Mercedes dealership in my home town. It was delicious and I highly recommend it if you’re local. With a giant water feature in the shape of the Mercedes logo pouring down from the ceiling of the second story into a planter on the ground floor, the beautiful cars to check out, and the shop and car lot on the roof of the building (not visible from the street, this dealership definitely lives up to the Mercedes standard.

During our long lunch, I had a chance to reflect on the past year and talk with my husband about all of the changes that we have gone through in my business since my last birthday.

OH MY GOODNESS! Last year at the same time I was working on my website, starting my ezine, pondering a blog, and making a serious plan of action for growth and expansion. This leap into action was launched at the eWomenNetwork Internatonal Conference in 2008 and catapulted into serious implementation at Alexandria Brown’s Online Success Blueprint Workshop later that year.

This past year has been a HUGE foundation building year for both myself and my business and I just want to say thank you to all of you who are reading my ezine and sending me your kind praises, and engaging with me on the social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. There is no way that I would be I business today with out your support and I am lpoving every minute of it.

I also want to say thank you to all of you who have supported my BIG IDEAS - and matter how crazy or out of reach they may have sounded. I totally embraced THINKING BIG last year and it is very exciting to see many of those exact ideas and visions becoming a reality. (Check out my speaker site www.jenniferbourn.com)

With only goal goals, it is easy for entrepreneurs to feel overwhelmed and actually put off the work that needs to be done to reach those goals because they seem big and scary. Big goals can seem intimidating and without a plan of action, many of us have not idea where to start and what to do first. The key for me has been to THINK BIG and then create a serious, step-by-step plan of action with my big goals broken down into several smaller goals.

By breaking down your BIG goals into several smaller goals, you not only have a much more clear and focused plan of action, but you will be able to celebrate your progress each step of the way and actually see the progress your are making to make your dreams and goals a reality.

If you have any insights on how your break down your big goals or have a success story on how you have tackled large projects, I’d love to hear from you!

Best Wishes & Incredible Success,
Jen Bourn

The start of the school year is always a reminder for me that the end of the year is quickly approaching. Right about now, if I blink too long it will be Christmas and we’ll all be in full-swing holiday mode.

These last few months are a popular time to really focus on achieving your goals and getting the things done that you wanted to accomplish in 2009. Did you want to get a new website launched? Did you want to start an ezine? Create a compelling speaker one sheet? Were you thinking about starting a blog or maybe sending out a postcard campaign?

With summer coming to an end and the prime vacation season over, there seems to be a renewed sense of motivation and power among business owners to set some personal deadlines to get your action items completed before the year comes to a close. In fact, I always see a huge surge in business in the month of September that continues through the end of the year. This is when business ramp up to have a positive and profitable final quarter of the year. The push that happens in the autumn to get things done and get new things started is always incredibly inspiring for me to be a part of.

This time of year is also the perfect time to start planning your marketing for 2010. Now is the time to make a list of what you want achieve personally and professionally next year and create a plan of action, outlining how you’re going to make it happen.

Are there things you can do now, or put in motion now that will help you start next year with a bang? Do you want to launch a new website or blog site in January? Are you focusing on getting more speaking gigs and want a new speaker sheet or speaker website developed? Do you want to finally get your ezine started and need a custom template created?

By looking at what you can put into motion now, you can often get a more financially-friendly option with payment plans. For example, for almost every service Bourn Creative offers, there is a multi-payment option spread out over multiple months to help you get professional, compelling marketing materials that pull your ideal clients right to you, WITHOUT breaking the bank!

What does this time of year signify for you?

Sometimes being an entrepreneur is hard and you feel like you’re on an impossible mission, wondering if you’ll ever get where you want to go or achieve what you want to achieve. That feeling is a sign you’re experiencing overwhelm.

Believe me, I know what extreme overwhelm feels like because I’ve been there for about the last eight months.

The good news is that overwhelm doesn’t have to last any longer than you allow it to. There are three reasons most entrepreneurs experience overwhelm:

• Entrepreneurs are by nature control freaks and they don’t delegate enough or at all.
• Entrepreneurs are so busy running their business and working in their business that they forget to work on their business.
• Entrepreneurs often operate without a plan in place and are flying by the seat of their pants.

There are three things you can do to get out of overwhelm and get on with your success!

• Create a plan of action.
  Make a list of what you want to accomplish, as well as the resources needed, the time needed, and the money needed to accomplish them. Prioritize them by which brings the most value, which can be completed the fastest, and which makes the most money. Review the results, put each goal in an ordered list, and then work on accomplishing them one at a time.
• Break up large goals and tasks into several smaller ones.
  Remember, it is not about perfection, it is about process. Make the journey to your destination fun and enjoyable, by celebrating small achievements along the way. Not only will you remind yourself of and feel good about your progress, but it will make reaching your goal much sweeter!
• Create a support team.
  Once you have broken your goals down into smaller tasks and objectives, group them into like-skilled groups and identify which ones do not require you to be completed. Outsource this tasks to your support team. You will lighten your load, but things will get done faster too!

If you do not have a solid plan or support team in place, I urge you at the very least to get in contact with my team and I and schedule a strategy session to get a basic plan in place!

Or, if you’re in need of a support team, I want to be your Internet Marketing Specialist, and with my Implementation Action Team working for you, you can accelerate your success and begin to live the life of your dreams.

Or better yet, you can turn what seems like Mission Impossible into Mission Possible.