If there's one thing I love, Reader, it's being spontaneous.

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Which is funny to say because I have no less than 33 planners, 152 notebooks and 14,293 planning / list-making accoutrements.

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But the truth is, I love change. Whether it's trying something new. Going on an adventure. Or just re-arranging the furniture in my house.

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Doesn't matter.

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I love the fresh outlook a little bit of spontaneity brings.

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Which, normally, is totally fine.

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Except when you move around things in your house and no one can find them anymore. Ever seen the movie Dark City? Well it's about a city that moves around every night. My husband likes to tell me he's living in his own personal version of Dark City being married to me because I love moving things around.

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I digress.

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My personal tendency is to embrace change is fine in my everyday life.

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But...

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It's NOT okay when it comes to growing my business. Through marketing.

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The truth is: in order for your online marketing to actually work (meaning: it brings you results that grow your business) there needs to be a plan.

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And to support the plan, there needs to be a methodology in place.

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Does this mean you can NEVER do anything fun? No. But it does mean there should be purpose behind your actions... and a little bit of restraint.

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Methodology is a purposeful, strategic way you approach every initiative you allow to take root in your business.

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An "initiative" is anything you spend an extended period of time focusing on.

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An example is: driving traffic to your website from organic searches.

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Or, growing your social media following on Instagram.

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You probably already have initiatives like this for your marketing.

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Maybe they exist in your head as an idea. Or maybe you scribbled them down in your planner, as a random hope you'd like to see achieved over the next 30 days.

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The thing about these initiatives is... unless there's a methodology that exists within your marketing systems to bring them to life?

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They won't happen.

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Or, if they do, you may not be aware of how they happened - which means you may not be able to replicate the process to make it reliably and consistently happen again.

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Having a marketing plan with a methodology for testing tactics that achieve your initiatives is a sign you're serious about your online marketing.

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But how do you get to that point?

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Good question, Reader. Let's answer it.

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The first step is establishing a marketing plan.

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A marketing plan is something I talk about so much that my children know what it is. Am I winning parent or not because of this? You decide.

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While you're deciding, I'll define it for you:

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A marketing plan is an internal document you create that's "active" for a specific period of time. The document helps you focus on:

• A particular target market. With a corresponding buyer persona outlined.
• The initiative(s) you'll focus on in order to grow your business. This includes a description of what they are, and what success looks like.
• A promotional calendar describing what's happening in your business sales-wise over the period of time this plan is effective for.

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There are other elements, too. Like a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats). An outline of the places you'll put your marketing content. The systems you'll use, etc.

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But the 3 things I mentioned above are the core components of your plan.

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Because they tell you: who, why and when.

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The only thing missing is the HOW.

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And that's where your methodology comes into play.

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A marketing methodology is a scientific approach to taking an idea, testing it, measuring its performance and then either optimizing, iterating or scrapping it.

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The process is informed by the initiatives and target market you've outlined, and it exists inside the timeframe you've noted on your calendar.

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In other words: it's a way to stop getting spontaneous (read: throwing spaghetti at the wall) in your marketing, and instead get some actual, concrete results.

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Spontaneity in marketing can have a place sometimes. Like if a crazy trend comes up out of nowhere and you have a very clever way of integrating it into your content.

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​(Lookin' at you corn kid...)​

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But, trends come and go quickly. And the likelihood of them having high levels of relevance to your business is pretty low.

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So rather than relying on trends, you should put your eggs into the plan + methodology basket... so you can create a strong marketing foundation for your business.

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What's this look like in practice? Here's an example.

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Let's say you're an author. You have an initiative to grow traffic to your website for the next 6 months, in advance of a book launch.

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If you had no methodology, you'd probably do something like:

• Think about writing a weekly blog post, which would give you 24 posts give or take. You vaguely come up with some ideas. You end up writing 10 of the 24 and never go back and optimize any of them. You also never measure the traffic so you have no idea if that even worked.

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• Get on Instagram and spend a bunch of time searching for trending audios, but not really analyzing WHY they're trending, what sort of videos are being created using the audio, or how trendy the audio is (how many videos are created with it). You create a handful of Reels, but never measure them.

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• Put together a free download offer that's positioned like, "join my email list to get updates!" but don't really elaborate on what those updates are, or why they're valuable. Plus, you don't really regularly update your list.

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Do any of these feel familiar?

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First of all, no judgment. I've been all 3 at various times, and at the same time. Regularly.

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Having a plan + methodology is HARD. It's why people don't do it.

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But let's look at what happens if you DO do it. Yes, I said doo-doo.

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If you have a methodology, here's how those 3 things look instead:

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Your initiative is to get more traffic. You decide to commit to less blog posts that are longer and higher quality as a hypothesis that longer articles will rank better in Google search. You decide to do 6 total blog posts.

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You invest in a keyword research tool and spend a week gathering data around keywords in a few core areas that have to do with the topic of your book and its relevance to your audience.

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You settle on 6 topics. You write the first one and publish it. Then give it a couple weeks before checking its performance.

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You look at your website traffic, and check keyword results by performing searches and seeing where you rank. Based on the data you gather, you determine whether or not your theory holds water. You make a decision about the next blog post based on the data you gathered about the performance of the first.

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The process is identical for the other 2 areas (social and email). Because the thing with a methodology is... it gives you a blanketed process for your marketing efforts, where you return control to yourself - you give yourself a system through which to test, measure and decide what works and what doesn't work, based on the initiative you're working toward in your business.

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And doesn't that feel so much better than throwing something out into the digital wind and saying a prayer, Reader? I think so.

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BTW, if you want some help coming up with your marketing plan... You can book a session with me and we'll create it together. It will take about an hour and a half but then it will be completed.

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Reply if you'd like info.

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That's it, Reader.

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Have a fantastic weekend,

Amanda

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PS: I missed emailing you last Friday because that morning we said goodbye to our family dog of 15 years, Aslan. If you'd like to see my post about it on Facebook, click here.

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