an ah-ha about marketing

One of the services I provide is business coaching for info-entrepreneurs. I was chatting with a colleague the other day about marketing plans, and I had an epiphany:

To achieve your goal, plan backward instead of forward

Sounds non-intuitive, doesn't it? But think for a minute. The most effective way to complete a project or solve a problem is to identify what your goal is (or the issue is that needs to be resolved), and then figure out how to get from here to there. Note that you establish the end point, and then look from that point of view to determine what needs to be done in order to get to that end point.

So, in the case of your professional life, you start with your measurable, tangible goals for what your business (or your career) will look like at the end of the year, and then you identify the specific marketing actions that will get you to that goal by the end of the year. Each of your marketing activities is tied directly to one or more of your specific goals.