A quick, easy year-end assessment you can use to gauge your preparedness for growing your business in the coming year, from marketing consultant and advertising copywriter John Kuraoka.

As 2006 draws to a close, it’s time to look ahead to the business challenges facing you in the first part of 2007. Here are seven important questions you should be asking yourself about your advertising and marketing, to make sure you have everything you need to grow your business.

1. Do I have the tools I need to proactively protect my market share?

As the economy zigs and zags, customer retention is the name of the game. After all, your most cost-effective source of additional business may well be your current customers and clients. So, take a good, hard look at the quality of your customer service. And, do everything you can to market to your current customer base, whether it’s through a quarterly newsletter, a monthly mailer, a weekly e-newsletter, or an ongoing customer loyalty program.

Also, reassess your competitive landscape. Have new competitive forces emerged? If so, you need to develop strategies – and create marketing tools based on those strategies – to counter those threats.

2. Do I have the tools I need to aggressively expand my market?

Identify your market opportunities going forward, and determine how can you start making inroads. Here, your marketing materials should deliver a one-two punch: lead generation and lead follow-up. For example: a direct mail advertising campaign with a brochure sent to those who respond (with names and addresses captured for future mailings). Here’s another example: use a small-space ad or pay-per-click campaign to drive traffic to a website landing page that offers a free report download in return for capturing a name and email address.

No matter how you do it, your plan needs to start with generating leads and end with closing a sale. As a result, you’ll need marketing tools for each point of customer contact, along with tools to mine the leads after your initial response.

3. Are my current marketing tools up-to-date?

An outdated brochure or website costs you business, invisibly! Potential customers just slip through your fingers because they don’t know all you have to offer, or all you’ve done lately. Make sure your marketing materials trumpet your latest achievements and reflect your capabilities now. When you update your marketing materials, you very often recapture sales opportunities that would otherwise be lost.

Another tip-off that you need a new marketing tool is if your sales staff has been asking for additional marketing support. It may be a customer referral program to generate more qualified leads, or a multimedia presentation, or a sales kit that truly reflects and supports the way they sell in the field. Now is the time to fit those new tools into next year’s marketing budget.

4. Have I added new marketing or promotional tools?

To maximize your return on any new marketing tool, you should make sure it’s well supported by the other tools in your sales cycle. For example, perhaps you developed a new ad campaign aimed at generating sales leads. That means you need follow-up materials that reinforce the ads, as well as cover letters and a secondary follow-up plan such as a postcard or email campaign. Or, maybe you created a new sales promotion. Your promotion needs to be supported with announcements in the local media, mailings or e-mailings to your customer list, a landing page on your website, a brochure or flyer, and a way to convert participants into long-term customers after the promotion period ends.

By integrating your new marketing tools with your existing marketing tools, you increase the power of all your marketing tools.

5. Am I prepared to introduce a new product or service?

Consider how you’re going to market any new products or services. They may be extensions of existing product or service lines, but they still need to be supported in the field. Have you incorporated them into your marketing materials? Make sure you have the ads, flyers, or sales sheets you need to generate leads and support sell-through.

A basic launch strategy includes press releases, announcements to your current customer base, advertising aimed both at creating awareness and generating leads, materials to follow up on those leads, and a process to gather positive customer testimonials for use in later marketing materials.

6. Have I received fresh testimonials from customers or clients?

Customer testimonials are powerful proof of your credibility, and the fresher they are the more credible you appear. If you’ve received recent words of praise, make sure you integrate them into your marketing materials along with the past year’s major accomplishments (important projects or new clients). And, if you haven’t received any testimonials, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate your current level of customer service. If your service is good, then you’re probably up against plain old inertia. Perhaps all it’ll take to unleash a flood of glowing testimonials, is a friendly request from you.

This is particularly important for relatively new concepts, products, and services. Personal testimonials help validate the benefits of these innovations, overcoming sales resistance and increasing the speed of your sales cycle.

7. Should I bring in professional help?

Well, it depends on your strengths and workload. However, most business professionals find themselves stretched thin – and that can stall an essential marketing project before it even starts. Outsourcing the work to a freelancer is one way to make sure that tasks get completed on time, and could be your most cost-effective option.

Whether you tackle these projects yourself or pass the burden to a professional copywriter, addressing these issues before January 1 will significantly improve your chances of having a happy – and prosperous – New Year.

About John Kuraoka

John Kuraoka is a freelance advertising creative director and copywriter based in San Diego, California. He has 23 years experience serving clients and ad agencies worldwide, developing and writing ad campaigns and sales support materials including brochures and websites. He also has taught classes on advertising, and led workshops on small business marketing. You can see more of his work at http://www.kuraoka.com.