Can you fill in the blanks?

Welcome to Week 28 of my adventure as a member of the Marketing Plan Group. In my posts, I talk about my voyage down the road of self-employment as a website copywriter, my achievements and roadblocks along the way, and what I’m learning from my group experience.

Time for a little fun with numbers! Think of it as numeric Mad Libs. Ready? Fill in the blanks for your business:

My monthly financial goal is _________.

When I look over my past projects, I can see that my average amount billed per project is _______. This means I need _____ projects per month to reach my goal.

Estimates

Last month, I did _____ estimates. The number of estimates that got accepted is _____.
This means, my average estimate acceptance rate is _____.

This means I need to do _____ estimates per month to reach my monthly goal.

Getting there

To create this number of estimates per month, I need to find prospects. Here’s how:

• I will attend _____ networking events.
• I will send a newsletter to _____ prospects.
• I will spend _____ hours per day/week social networking.
• I will write _____ blog posts and/or _____ articles.
• I will make _____ research calls.
• I will reconnect with _____ prospects.
• I will comment on _____ blog posts.

If you’re not finding enough prospects, to create enough estimates, to get enough projects – then you need to up your marketing efforts. Yep, it all comes down to marketing.

Did you fill in the blanks? Did you learn something you didn’t already know?

Comments

[lidia varesco design]

This is a great way to approach goals, much less daunting than a complicated marketing plan. Seeing actual numbers is good incentive and an easy way to track results. I just printed it out and plan to use it right away!

Thanks for sharing, Deidre!

[Alle L'Eveille]

Nice, simple, helpful tool that I edited a bit to fit my needs. I added prospecting (calling happy client to touch base and ask for referrals) and successful actions. Referral from the right clients, has been a successful action in the past. I agree that not all referrals are good ones.

I've made a version to go in my business plan notebook, so I can do a weekly assessment. Having it in a easy and approachable format, means that I will actually make myself focus on getting it done!

Well done! This is one of the most useful item I've been in the blog!