Treat your marketing activities like an investment portfolio
I like to compare having an effective marketing plan to an investment portfolio. If you put all your money into one investment and it tanks you loose big time. A good financial advisor will take your money and spread it out amongst a number of investments. This is known as diversifying.
The same holds true for marketing. You must diversify.
The good news is that unlike investments, you can have limited resources to market your business and still succeed. The key is determine at least three ways to promote your business over a three-month period and then to schedule these activities into your daytimer.
The reason for setting these activities up over a three-month period is that it takes a minumium of 90 days to see results. To plan your entire year, you will need to implement these promotional activities for a period of 9 to 12 months. At that point, you need to decide which activities worked best and which ones should be dropped.