Bruce Outridge

Marketing Your Plan or Planning to Market

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Bruce

I recently gave a presentation to a group of enthusiastic recruiting specialists on using social media to find professional truck drivers. There is a huge driver shortage coming in the industry and marketing and recruiting will be a significant issue. The one thing that was stressed through the presentation is that just getting onto social media will not have people flooding to your door. It is just one piece of the marketing puzzle.

For an entrepreneur it is important to have a plan for your marketing strategy on paper before you even sign up for social media or any other type of advertising program. Know your audience, know your demographic profiles, know your cost and budget, and know your time frame. It will take at least six months of dedicated work to get any marketing program off the ground. Even more important is do you have the dedication to keep the train moving even when nothing is happening. For more on that check out my last blog post called “Working Your Game Plan“.

Now the other problem is planning your marketing startegy so much that you don’t actually implement it and do nothing. The fun part is planning is having the action plan. The hard part is actually doing the action plan. I have seen many great ideas sit on the sidelines due to inactive participants. It can be very hard work to keep it going.

The best way to start is to take small bites, and get them going sufficiently before taking another bite. Build your network slow and steady and you will have a stronger network. Keep it sustainable and you will be able to manage it over the long term. So to recap, evaluate the media you can afford and that will get you in front of your potential clients. Create a time frame for success and build it slow. Keep at it with dedication, even when not much is happening. You’ll make it just keep going, by taking small steps you can tweak your plan as you go along.

About the Author

Bruce Outridge is leadership consultant in the transportation and business sectors. He specializes in the subjects of complacency, time management, customer service, and marketing for entrepreneurs and professional drivers. For more information on programs and services visit http://www.outridge.ca

Are you following your game plan?

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Bruce

2 Comments

Are you following your game plan? Many people especially entrepreneurs, marketing specialists, artists etc. have great intentions of creating a marketing plan and implementing it, however when they don’t see any results they start to slip into that complacency stage assuming nothing is working. This is very true especially with social media where you hear that all you have to do is sign on and then people will flood to your business. Nothing is further from the truth.

Anyone starting any kind of long term project, business, or marketing effort will need to realize that it may take anywhere from 6 months to a year or more to start seeing the fruits of their labour. The important part is to keep working at it with all of your might. This has happened to me many times through our various business ventures. I remember when I started my blog and every week posted an article wondering if anyone was even reading them. Then out of the blue I would get a reply from someone with a comment. The same thing happened on Twitter when I first signed on, zero followers and I didn’t follow anyone, heck I barely ever signed on. But I put it on my to-do list anyway and kept posting. Today I have 15 people following my comments on Twitter. Sure it’s not huge like Lady Gaga, and I’m sure if I spent even more time telling people what I ate for lunch and giving more comments on subjects I could gain a lot more. My newsletter has just started bringing in clients who have been following me for a year. People are ready to listen at different times in their lives and if you keep moving forward you will be there when they need you.

The point is to keep working, and even more important is that I am following my original game plan for social media marketing. I’ve used social media as an example but I have found the same ground can be gained through other areas by just staying with the plan. Your gut will tell you when you’re ready to grow, so stick to the plan. I enjoy reading my horoscope once in a while, I’ll read it and it will say “things are going on in the background that you don’t know about”. Then down the road I will talk with someone and they will ask “if my ears were burning” because they were recommending me to someone for an opportunity.

So if you’re the type of person to let your guard down when you don’t see things happening then I suggest you take those scrap pieces of paper that you wrote those original goals on ,dust them off and get back to work on them. The success in hitting goals is making sure you follow through with the work part.

The author is a consultant in the transportation and business markets. To learn more about Bruce visit Outridge Consulting Services at http://www.outridge.ca.

Complacency Almost Killed Me!

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Bruce

1 Comment

I’ll never forget it, it was the perfect day for driving. A beautiful sun was overhead, fresh spring air out of my window, dry roads, and nothing but flat land highway with no four wheelers bouncing around like ping pong balls. For a professional truck driver the conditions couldn’t get any better, my truck was clean and I was feeling good. I was west of Chicago on my way to Nebraska and things were good. It was almost to the point where it was getting boring and my mind was starting to drift into that complacency mode where it needed a wake up. That being said, I was thinking of a cup of coffee, not the situation that happened. I was just cruising along at 55 mph when over the C.B. radio I heard the words “Here he comes!” I looked to the left and saw a car spinning out of control through the median from the other side of the highway towards me. The car had been cut off by another passing driver and had lost control. As I quickly evaluated the situation I realized we were going to hit head on if I kept going on the same path because the car was aiming straight across both lanes of ahead of me. I locked up the brakes sending smoke from the tires surrounding my rig and started to steer toward the left lane of the highway. The car coming through the median managed to stop in the right hand lane of the highway on my side. As the traffic on the highway came to a stop and the smoke cleared I rushed out of the truck to see how we ended up expecting to see much damage from the situation. As I came around the front of the truck, the driver of the car began to thank me repeatedly, “Thank you, thank you” he kept saying. His vehicle had stopped 2 inches from the fuel tank on the right hand side of my truck. Had he hit my fuel tank the situation would have been quite different. That car was filled with a family of four going on vacation.

That happened 20 years ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday. The reason I write about it is many people get into that mode of complacency on a regular basis. Evaluating your conditions, that includes your mindset at the time regularly can be the key between an incident or not. Keeping fresh in your job, your life, and your processes will make the difference between being a statistic and being successful. Complacency almost killed me don’t let it kill you!

For information on programs for your team on complcency visit the presentations page on the Outridge Consulting Service’s website at http://www.outridge.ca