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HOW TO CREATE A MARKETING PLAN FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS
HOW TO CREATE A MARKETING PLAN FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS
by Trudi Roach
How to Write the Most Effective Small Business Marketing Plan Ever (with a FREE Template!)
When I worked in the corporate fashion industry in New York, marketing was always a big, shiny, glamorous thing! There was a fabulous, creative and innovative team to deliver inspirational and brand-right marketing month after month.
As entrepreneurs, we know that marketing your own business doesn't look or feel anything like that.
If you have a business you need a marketing plan.
You probably know all the reasons why having a marketing plan is a must for your business. (If not, learn about the basics here). After all, marketing is what helps you spread the word about your business and get new customers.
And you can’t have successful marketing without a clearly defined and well-thought-out plan. But, if you’ve never created a marketing plan before, it can be difficult to know where to start.
Keep reading to learn how to write a marketing plan in 7 steps!
My 7- step strategy will walk you through how to:
1. Assess your current business situation
2. Determine what you’re able to invest
3. Outline your marketing goals
4. Identify your target audience
5. Determine your marketing tactics
6. Put together an action plan that prioritizes tasks
7. Get started on your plan today
I’ve compiled these steps into a grab this marketing plan template you can use to get started right now.
Let’s walk through each of the steps in detail so you have everything you need to create a marketing plan for your small business.
HOW TO CREATE A MARKETING PLAN STEP 1: ASSESS YOUR CURRENT SITUATION
You might have a general idea of where you want to go with your marketing, but you have to put that idea into the appropriate context of an ideal customer persona – more on this later.
This means performing market research to understand the scope of both your industry and your audience, with an eye out for nuances that could directly affect your plans.
Before you get started outlining the main portion of your small business marketing plan, it’s important to take stock of where you are now so you can determine the best marketing goals and objectives.
This is the ideal time for a simple SWOT analysis.
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
A SWOT analysis is like a Brand Audit. It’s helpful when creating your marketing plan because it allows you to take an objective look at your business and determine areas where you’re doing well right now and areas where you might want to improve.
For example, you might already have a good social media presence, so that would be a strength, but you’re not getting as many website visits as you think you should be, which could be an opportunity.
Once you conduct your Brand Audit, you might also consider taking a look at your top competitors and analyzing what type of marketing they seem to be doing, where they’re doing well, and where you could stand out.
To truly understand your market and what makes your audience tick, you need to ask yourself a series of questions that uncover the unknowns and the truths.
What are your competitors doing with their emails, social media, and blog posts?
What platforms does your audience use the most?
What does a buyer’s journey look like in your niche?
This is the first step in creating a small business marketing plan that works.
Finding the answers to questions like these will help you shape your marketing plan from the outside so that you can focus your efforts and not waste time on fruitless endeavors.
Evaluate Your Products
You are an expert on the product you’re selling. While you obviously know a lot already, try to come at it from a new perspective.
Here are some questions you should be asking at this step:
What kinds of product-related questions would a first-time visitor to your brand have?
What are the stand-out features that separate your products from the competition?
What is it about your competitors’ products that might give them an edge over you?
What are the most common issues your customers have with your product?
Evaluating your products from all possible angles will help you focus on questions and opportunities, both of which can help guide your marketing plan.
By taking a good look at your overall business as well as your competitors’ businesses, you can set a solid foundation for the rest of your marketing plan.
HOW TO CREATE A MARKETING PLAN STEP 2: ESTABLISH YOUR BUDGET
Now that you’ve analyzed your current business, it’s time to figure out how much you’re going to be able to invest in a marketing plan for your small business. Having a budget will help guide the rest of your planning.
Marketing costs money.
You will need to be realistic about how much you’re able to invest in a successful marketing plan.
Regardless of the dollars you have to spend or how good you are with numbers, prioritizing your small business marketing budget is key to your marketing plan.
Most of us don’t have access to an unlimited marketing budget. Know that it’s OK to start small and do more later.
Determining your budget will help you decide what plans are manageable and which need to be put on hold for later.
Once you know how much you’re able to spend, you should allocate your budget by putting the most money behind the effort you think will reap the most benefit for your business.
You might be guessing with your first budget, but that’s fine. Do some research to see what other small businesses and direct competitors are putting money behind and why.
Then, as time goes on, you can evaluate the ROI, (return on investment), of your various efforts to determine if your budget is being used wisely.
Did you know you can get started with paid Ads with a budget of just $10?
There’s always room for adjustments and tweaks to your budget. Just continue to put your money where it will go the furthest, and you’ll avoid wasting dollars on strategies that are underdelivering.
Budget your dollars
If you’re unsure how much money you should be spending on marketing, most new businesses allocate 12-20% of their gross revenue while established businesses allocate 6-12%.
It may seem like a large chunk, but the return on your investment will be worth it with the right small business marketing plan!
And even if you have little-to-no budget to spend on marketing, any little bit can help you take your business to the next level. (Plus, here are some great free and low-cost marketing ideas you can try.)
Budget your time
How much time are you able to invest per week in marketing?
It’s really easy to let your marketing efforts slide as you focus on running your business or running to your 9-5. But having a specific goal will help you keep track of how you are doing relative to your plan.
In terms of how far out you should plan, a year is not a bad place to start. If this is the first time you’ve put together a marketing plan for your business, just know that you might need to do a few course corrections over time.
You don’t have to completely change your marketing strategies every month, just don’t go an entire year without taking stock of what’s working and what’s not.
HOW TO CREATE A MARKETING PLAN STEP 3: OUTLINE YOUR MARKETING GOALS
Now you have a solid understanding of your opportunities and weaknesses as well as your budget, you can begin writing your marketing goals.
Start by thinking about your big goals (more revenue, more customers, etc.) and forming offshoots with some of the smaller goals that will help you get there.
Get as specific as you can with what you want to achieve with your marketing plan. “More sales” is an obvious objective, but it’s more beneficial to break it down into smaller, tangible goals.
In other words, the more specific, the better.
And helps identify the various ways you’ll measure the success of your efforts, and help you to meet or get close to meeting those goals.
Your marketing goals should be SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time-specific
So instead of listing “more sales” under your goal section, try these specific goals on for size:
Here are some examples of SMART marketing goals:
· Increase website visits by 5% in six months
· Increase hoodie sales by 5% in March
· Add 100 new subscribers to my email list in May
· Get one piece of content published a month.
· Generate 100 leads from social media each month.
Each of these goals is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-specific.
As a small business, when it comes to writing your marketing goals, you might consider some broader marketing goals like:
· Building an online presence
· Generating leads (and customers)
· Increasing brand awareness
· Connecting and engaging with your audience
· Growing your online audience
You can determine which of these make the most sense for your business and then make them SMART.
Remember, having a lot of goals isn’t a bad thing, as long as you have strategies to move them forward.
HOW TO CREATE A MARKETING PLAN STEP 4: IDENTIFY YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
Before you can solidify your marketing plan, it’s crucial to know who you’re going to be targeting.
Your target audience is based on a number of factors like your business type, your area of operation, and so much more.
You’d be amazed at how many small businesses haven’t officially outlined their ideal buyer or target audience. They may claim to know exactly who that person is, but the truth is, over time, the target audience changes and evolves.
Just like businesses, things adjust as the market adjusts, and who you initially thought you’d be selling to may look a little different a few years in.
That’s why it’s imperative that you know who your target audience is, nail down exact characteristics, and document them. This is all a part of having an effective marketing strategy, because after all, if you don’t know who you’re marketing to, then you won’t be able to sell your product.
Get to know your ideal customer, or target audience inside and out before launching your marketing plan.
This includes diving into their wants, needs, pain points, and demographics. Here’s an example of the kinds of questions to ask yourself to help identify your target audience:
Who are your current customers?
Who else would you want to reach?
What products are your customers buying from you? Look for opportunities to show other products a little more love.
What are your customers’ pain points your business can address?
What information is influencing their purchasing decision? Can you pinpoint specific information, or tweak your marketing messaging to address areas of improvement (such as bad reviews!)?
The more specific your questions, the more insights you’ll gain into what it is about your product that attracts your audience and what you can do to hold their attention over time.
Once you have your target audience defined, you can even create your Ideal Customer profile to better understand who you’re targeting and why.
HOW TO CREATE A MARKETING PLAN STEP 5: THINK TACTICS AND STRATEGY
Now you’ve identified your goals, it’s time to talk strategy. For most marketing plans, your tactics will be divided into five core initiatives:
Content marketing
Email marketing
Paid advertising
SEO
Social media
Take a look at each of your marketing goals and list the marketing tactics or actions you think you would need to do to reach them.
Figure out how your goals fit into each of these tactics, as well as how they come together to form your bigger marketing strategy.
If you know one of your goals is about growing your email list, make sure you’re creating and publishing the right content to generate new subscribers.
Map out exactly what efforts you’ll be using and which goal they help achieve. Including this in your marketing plan will help you easily track whether or not those efforts are successful.
Let’s use our example marketing goal from above. In order to increase website visits by 5% in six months, there are a number of different tactics we can use, like:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – this will help you optimize your website to get found in search engines.
Ads can help grow your audience and drive more visitors to your website.
Once you’ve completed this exercise for each marketing goal, it’s time to revisit the budget you set in step two to figure out what’s doable based on time and overall budget.
This is also the perfect time to decide whether you need help building out your marketing plan by working with a business coach.
Depending on where you are with your clothing brand and product offering, it might make sense to get help with your marketing goals, and it will save you time, help grow your brand, and deliver better results in the long run.
HOW TO CREATE A MARKETING PLAN STEP 6: PUT TOGETHER AN ACTION PLAN THAT PRIORITIZES TASKS
You now have all the pieces to put together a marketing plan.
The next task is to simply write down the tasks that you want to accomplish and prioritize them.
You want to have a concise to-do list that you can reference any time you have a spare moment to work on your marketing.
Creating this roadmap will make your marketing far more approachable, and it will make you far more likely to get started and stick with it.
Once you create your plan, keep it in a visible spot for quick access and accountability.
HOW TO CREATE A MARKETING PLAN STEP 7: GET STARTED WITH YOUR SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING PLAN TODAY.
There you have it. That's how to write a marketing plan in 7 steps!
Now that you’ve created your small business marketing plan, make sure to check in, measure your results, and make any appropriate adjustments.
Your goals may shift as changes happen in your business, and your market, but your overall marketing plan should keep you on track for success and growth.
Putting together your first real marketing plan can be intimidating.
But every step outlined here will help you get closer to reaching your goals.
And if you need to tweak it, these steps will provide you with a solid foundation of knowledge so that you aren’t navigating those changes in the dark.
With the 7 steps above, you’ll be well on the way to meeting your marketing goals and effectively tracking your progress.
PS: Want more product marketing tips? Check out these resources:
