Do you have a folder full of marketing ideas sitting on your desk? Or are those ideas still rattling around in your head?

Either way, putting them into a concrete plan forces you to evaluate whether they make sense or not.

A clear plan helps you channel your energy into routes that give you the best chance of reaching your goals rather than scattering yourself by doing a bit of this and a bit of that as the fancy takes you.

It does take time and effort to put a plan together but once it's done, your life will be easier and your activities more productive - with less effort.

Here's what a marketing plan helps you do:

• Get your dreams out of your head and onto paper.
• Define what you want your marketing efforts to achieve over the next year.
• Do all your thinking at the beginning of the year! When you consider your strategy for the whole year, you'll see how your marketing methods can support and feed off each other so you use your time and resources more efficiently and you get better results with less effort.
• Understand what your audience wants and how you can satisfy them.
• Figure out how to attract and retain your clients, and how to reinvigorate old clients so you make more money with what you already have.
• Keep your focus only on the activities that will bring the results you want.
• Measure the results of your efforts so you can make adjustments if necessary.
• Evaluate whether the latest, seductive new marketing method fits in with what you are trying to achieve.
• Become more effective at handling problems because you'll have a foundation to make decisions from.
• Reach your financial goals.

This doesn't mean that you don't make adjustments as you go through the year but the plan sets the direction.

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."
Benjamin Franklin

The most important step is the first one: getting started. Go for it!

Before money was invented, bartering (also known as trading) was how local economies worked: you give me a chicken and I give you a bag of potatoes.

Today there are organizations that facilitate barter (or trades) between businesses. I used to be a member of one.

The organization functioned as a middleman between the service provider and the client. When you bought the services of another member, their fee was deducted from your account with the barter organization and credited to theirs. The service provider could then use that credit to buy services from other members of the organization. The fee you charged for your services was the same as your regular dollar fee: if your cash services cost $100 an hour, then you charged 100 barter dollars for trades.

This type of system works well because you can use your credit to buy from anyone in the organization.

It gets slippery when you trade directly with another individual, rather than through a middleman. A few simple guidelines can help avoid some of biggest mistakes people make when trading. They will help keep the relationship professional and avoid animosity, misunderstandings and resentments later.

1. Do business exactly as if the client were paying you by check, credit card or other traditional method. Even though you're getting paid with services rather than cash, it's still a business relationship and should be treated as such.
2. Only trade the VALUE of your services, not the TIME you spend delivering your service. I once had a massage therapist ask if I'd trade services: she would give me a one hour massage and I would give her an hour of consulting. The problem was one hour of my services was more expensive than one hour of her massage. That kind of trade can end up with one person feeling that they haven't received full value. Make sure the value you're giving or getting is the same as if you were both paying cash.
3. Trade the full monetary value of your services. Just because it's trade doesn't mean you have to offer a discount (unless you have a solid business reason for doing so).
4. If you usually use a contract, use the same one as for your cash transactions. The terms of your business relationship remain the same, only the form of payment is different.
5. Trade for services you genuinely need or want. Don't trade to do someone else a favor. It devalues your service.
6. Only trade for services you need right now or in the very near future. Many people do not keep good records of their trades because they don't take them as seriously as cash transactions. They can forget that they still owe you. That can lead to awkward situations and has the potential to damage the relationship.
7. Check with your tax professional on any tax ramifications of trading.

I know how easy it is to buy into the doom and gloom on TV. (My solution to that was to get rid of my TV!) And I limit how much news I read online.

Wallowing in the depression keeps you stuck in what's happening now. Not that it doesn't deserve attention: we all have to make tough decisions about where to spend our marketing dollars.

But what happens when the downturn is over and the upturn begins? Now is the time to position yourself to meet that time head on. Those who position themselves now will survive when the economy recovers. Both IBM and Microsoft were started during economic downturns. We're not all aiming to be the next IBM or Microsoft but there's a lesson to be learned from them.

Keep the vision of what you want and work towards it, so that your direction is clear when things turn around.

In a sluggish economy, it's the businesses who keep marketing, spreading the word, and planning for better times, who survive with the best results.

What can you do today to make sure you are investing not just in current survival but in the future of your business?

I'm investigating this question right now. I'll keep you informed of developments!

1. Make sure you ask people to take action to get on your list e.g. they have to submit their name in a form or, if you're at a business meeting, ask them to write "sign me up for your newsletter" on the back of their business card and hand it to you. Just a verbal "sign me up" is not enough. That can slip from the tongue easily and is just as quickly forgotten. People are less likely to forget when they've taken physical action.
2. Don't buy lists. You have no idea where the names came from and that can get you in trouble. Those people may have signed up for something, but not for YOUR list. Collect your own names. Don't be overly concerned about the size of your list. It's better to have a small number of targeted, responsive subscribers than a large group of people who could care less about you.
3. Use an autoresponder to thank your subscribers as soon as they sign up, and let them know what to expect from you.
4. Keep in touch with your list regularly. If a long time goes by without an email, people will forget who you are and why they signed up and may consider your email spam without even opening it.
5. Don't make outrageous claims in your subject line. Initially it may get attention but in the end it doesn't look credible and may trigger an alarm button in the minds of some of your reader.
6. If someone complains directly to you, send a brief apology and remove them from your list.

If you know already, read on anyway for useful tips on how to make their work well for you. If you don't know, read on and find out!

An autoresponder is exactly what it says - a responder that's automatic. It's an online system that allows you to distribute emails automatically without having to write and send each one individually.

Here's how it works.

Let's say you have an newsletter that you send out regularly and you want new subscribers to get certain information on signing up. In advance you write your emails containing the information. This can be just one email, or a whole series spaced over a period of time. The number of emails and the intervals at which they are sent is entirely up to you.

Then you set your autoresponder to begin sending when someone signs up. The autoresponder for my newsletter subscribers contains a long series of emails sent at intervals of a couple of days. They include a 7-part email course on marketing as well as details on where to download the free website report I offer and they end with a special gift just for my subscribers. And once it's set up I don't have to lift a finger to make it happen.

Watch your inbox and see how many other uses there are for autoresponders.

You've probably noticed that when you buy a product online, you get an immediate confirmation email: that's an autoresponder in action as well. Notice how many emails you get. Usually a confirmation of your order. Then one when your product is shipped. And maybe more.

Often that's the last you'll hear from the company but it doesn't have to stop there.

You can offer great customer service by setting up a series of emails asking if the product arrived safely or, in the case of an electronic product, if they downloaded it without problems, whether it was satisfactory, maybe to suggest another complimentary product they might like to buy, (this is called up-selling like the folks at MacDonalds who ask "Do you want fries with that?") It's planting a seed that might not have been there before and may lead to more business for you.

Key of course is to be friendly and sincere, and to write your autoresponder emails from a place of wanting to be of service rather than simply wanting to suck more dollars out of their bank accounts. Believe me, the energy you write your emails with, will come through to the recipient!

The beauty of autoresponders is that you can keep in touch with your customers regularly. You nurture those client relationships without spending endless hours on the phone. Or forgetting altogether. Or having so many clients that the sheer volume would not allow for telephone follow up.

The emails are sent out automatically, whether you are at your computer or online or not. You can be enjoying your vacation in the Bahamas (lucky you!) and your emails will still go out like clockwork.

There are lots of autoresponder systems available. Many of them only have email distribution and some are hooked into a complete shopping cart system.

If you're just starting out and you intend to sell products later, I recommend a full shopping cart system, even if you don't use all its features at the beginning.

Otherwise you can run into problems. You may end up with some contacts in your autoresponder program (those who signed up for your newsletter or teleclass etc.) and some in your shopping cart (those who bought a product). There's no easy way to transfer all your clients from one system to another without requiring them to "opt-in" all over again. So if you decide to start with a system that is purely autoresponders, check that it integrates easily with shopping cart software.