Date: November 2015

What's not to love about Monday's? If you are anything like me, you arrive at work all bubbly ready to tackle the week ahead; refreshed and excited about what can be achieved.

Making a conscience effort to be the best version of yourself takes a lot of soul searching. It also takes a lot of strength as you have to look yourself in the mirror and work out what is working and what isn't. Where you can improve and where you don't have to.

About 3 or so years ago, I made a momentus change by looking deeply within myself and exploring what I could possibly achieve in this lifetime. I set goals for everything imaginable, including the life of my dog (check out Instagram account @thereal_pippasmith), my health, my family, my career and so on.

I broke up every area of my life and worked out how I could live it better than I have lived it before. And you know what, it mostly works. Except you will slip up like I did on a few things, but they will mostly be things of the heart where your reaction isn't quite what you would have planned for it to be. By slipping up, you have the opportunity to change and work on that area, while you keep developing yourself and achieving the goals set out in front of you.

So your marketing for this year is pretty much done and dusted now… except for your last pre-Christmas campaigns over the next few weeks. So what then? Do you have a plan in place for talking to your customers in January, with a strategy that will take you through 2016?

Telling the right story at the right time is essential to a successful Marketing campaign, and the last thing you want is to be behind the eight-ball due to a lack of planning. Leaving it until you get back from holidays in January to think about your Marketing message means you will be well behind your competitors who have a strategy mapped out.

Here are my 3 top tips for getting ahead of the game with your Marketing for 2016…

If you thought it was hard to start a business, spare a thought for those who are actually running businesses and trying to take them to the next level.   It's one thing to get off your bum and start a business that originates as just an idea, or the next viable step from working for someone else, but what happens when that takes off? Is it easier or is it harder.

Guest Post by entrepreneur and "money man" Scott Malcolm, of Money Mechanics. 

The excitement of a new business venture or idea requires a different energy and skill set to the day to day of running a business.  Entrepreneurs have skill set and vision to setup business but often need strategies in place to take the business to the next level and run it!

A high performing marketing team differs from one industry to another and for that matter, one business to another. The basic fundamental of what defines the success of a high performing marketing team relates solely to the performance of the balance sheet, and marketing's ability to drive high quality leads to sales teams, and give those same teams all the tools in which they need to sell.

For the past 4 days, I have been in rural North Queensland township of Charters Towers. The town has just over 6,000 people, but the catchment of its region extends to just over 12,000 and takes in neighbouring townships.

As a professional services firm, we started the business hustling. Going to network events, speaking at every opportunity, and using our connections to bootstrap the growth of the company. We even used PR, which put me out of my comfort zone big time.

The question is often asked of our people at Marketing Eye : "What do you do that other marketing firms don't?". And the answer is quite simple.

While other's are now using the term "outsourced marketing department", few have actually defined it quite like we have at Marketing Eye. After 24 years in the industry, I have learned a lot from both succeeding and failing. From these learnings, I have developed a series of systems, processes and ways in which to improve our capability of delivering world-leading marketing strategies to businesses seeking a high growth return.

The difference is from start to finish

Old school marketers are dead. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that.