Time to Plan the Plan!

Happy New Year, my friend. Steve Schneiderman here, and boy, am
I glad 2009 is behind us. Surely things have to start getting
better, don't they? Let's face it: 2009 sucked for most of us. It
was a challenge just to get out of bed in the morning. I'm still
feeling the after effects and many of my friends are, too.

So do you have a plan for 2010? I hope so. Things always tend to
go better when you have a road map in hand. What's your plan? I'm
not talking some silly New Year's Resolution either. I am talking
about a solid plain to help get you and your company from Point A
to Point B.

Let's say your goal is to increase your annual revenue by X%.
Stating that goal is fine, but how are you going to realize that
goal? Saying it aloud may sound nice, but it is not enough.
What's the plan?

For 2009 my revenue was down by about 25%. For 2010, my goal is
to stop the bleeding and give myself time to heal. I'm going to
reset my revenue goal back to what I earned in 2008. I'm being
very conservative and realistic rather than project double the
revenue during troubled economic times. So setting a realistic
goal is the way to start planning.

I'm also raising my hourly rate by 33%, too, from $150.00/hour
to $200.00/hour with the goal of working less hours and shorter
days, so I will earn approximately the same revenue as I did two
years ago. That's one of my tactics for achieving my goal.

I've looked at what didn't work in 2009 and I'm avoiding wasting
additional time and money on those activities, most notably,
advertising through professional associations and trade shows.
Just doesn't work for me. Tried to tackle various niches last
year by joining associations in those niches with the belief that
business would come through networking and advertising to those
associations. I wasted $1,000.00 on that effort and countless
hours working the system and got nowhere. So avoiding what I've
learned doesn't work is also one of my tactics for achieving my
2010 goals.

I'm also going to focus my activities on larger clients. While I
will still do the small micro site every so often for fun, I will
focus on small to mid-sized companies who have a vacuum in either
marketing or operations. These people already have a level of
pain that I can fix, and they are willing to pay my rate without
argument.

I'm also doing more competitive analysis so I understand the lay
of the land better. In my backyard there are many consultants and
many claim to do what I do, but I've discovered very few of them
provide all of the same services. In fact, my combination of
skills and experience is actually a very rare combination. So
this tells me I can ask a premium for my services and target
larger clients who I know can afford me -- and need me.

I found a great tool for performing some online competitive
analysis. It's called WebComp Analyst by Jonathan Leger. It
enables you to save endless hours of search engine analysis by
quickly performing keyword searches and showing you those sites
that rank high for them. Not only that, it also does deep-link
analysis to show you the text links the sites use to help them
rank so high. Armed with this knowledge, you can tweak your web
site to out-perform your competitors in the organic search
results of the major search engines. Here's the review and some
screen shots of the tool in action:

http://www.cooltoolawards.com/software/utilities/webcompanalyst.htm

Continue thinking about your 2010 goals and your tactics for
delivering on those goals. If you want to bounce your ideas off
me, just send me an email to info@schneiderman.net. I'm happy to
help.

Until next time,


Steve Schneiderman

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