What Is a Marketing Plan? And why you need one for your Small Business.

by Trudi Roach

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What Is a Marketing Strategy? And why do you need one for your product business?

You've launched your product, and now it's time to promote it. Although it may seem simple enough to make a few social media posts or blast a few promotional emails if your marketing is not clear it will not only confuse your target audience but can actually harm your business.

You need to create a clear marketing strategy.

Mapping out your marketing plan can feel like a lot when you’re a one-person show, but I’ve learned over the years that a great marketing plan is a major competitive advantage and is worth the time that it takes to put together.

A marketing plan is a strategic roadmap for how you communicate (on and offline) with your target audience to successfully promote your products.

Depending on what you want to accomplish, marketing plans can either be extremely basic or highly detailed.

What should a marketing plan include?

A marketing plan outlines your paid advertising, social media, email, SEO, and/or content marketing strategy Think of it as a roadmap that shows your starting point and the path to your destination.

Your marketing plan describes the objectives of your strategy, like increasing traffic to your website, building product awareness, or growing your audience. Beyond that, it details the action plan — the things you need to do to achieve those goals — and stipulates a timeline for each.

Developing strategies can be difficult, but they make a major difference in the time it takes to achieve your goals. This is the importance of a marketing plan, to avoid distractions and keep you moving, on track, towards your goals.

What should a marketing plan include?

Well, not all marketing plans are created equal, but most share a similar structure.

Here’s what a simple marketing plan might look like:

A list of goals (with accompanying time limits)
Research including SWOT analysis, competitor analysis, buyer purchase cycle, and Ideal Customer profile
Your detailed strategy
A definition of your key performance indicators (KPIs) and result tracking methods.
A tactical process

What Is a Marketing Plan? Types of marketing plans.

There are several different types of marketing plans you can use based on certain strategies that make sense for your business. You will likely need a combination of the following plans to create an effective, comprehensive marketing strategy:

An advertising plan
A branding plan
A content marketing plan
A customer acquisition plan
A direct marketing plan
An email marketing plan
A public relations plan
A print marketing plan
A retention plan
A search engine optimization plan
A social media marketing plan
influencer marketing
video marketing

What Are the Benefits of a Marketing Plan?

Benefits of having a marketing Plan #1: Guide Your Content Marketing.

An effective marketing plan gives your content a North Star to follow. It outlines the goals and expectations, as well as how to meet them.

For example, if your goal is to increase funnel conversion, your marketing plan will highlight the things you need to do at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Perhaps you need to publish more blog posts that address questions at the consideration stage of the journey.

Or, maybe you need to create more reviews to help customers on the fence make a decision to buy.

Or, if you aren’t seeing enough visitors to your website, then you know it’s time to up your social media and paid Ads.

A Marketing plan shows how your product is different from your competitors, and who your product is for. It helps you identify the market needs your product meets.

Your marketing plan also offers an outlined process for creating content and distributing it so that it delivers as much value as possible. This ensures that your strategy has legs and gets put into motion.

Benefits of having a marketing Plan #2: Guide Your Marketing and Sales Efforts

Beyond guiding your content marketing efforts, a marketing plan streamlines your sales process. Your marketing plan gives you a blueprint that lets you know exactly what steps to take to get sales results.

Let’s say your website brings in 1000 visitors a month, 3% of which convert.

That means every month, you get 30 customers.

If you want to double the number of customers every month, then it means you have to double your web traffic or improve the conversion rate.

With a marketing plan, you have your conversion goals tracked so you can easily check in and see if they’re being met.

Benefits of having a marketing Plan #3: Track Your Goals and Strategy

Another major benefit of a marketing plan for you is that rather than simply guessing metrics, it forces you to sit down and do the math about your business goals and how to realistically fulfill them.

Even if your business is small, tracking results and metrics are valuable.

When you look at your data, you can dig further to understand what it will take to reach the goals you’ve set.

Having measurable goals is the only way to be successful in actually meeting them.

Since your marketing plan is guiding your sales and marketing efforts, you can now connect the dots to the metrics you’ll use to track your progress.

Consistent evaluation and tweaks to your strategy enable you to ultimately achieve your goals.

Ready to get your marketing plan created and into action, with everything you need to know in just 7 simple steps? Learn how to write your own marketing plan. I'm teaching my 7- step strategy over in my next blog post, "How to Create a Marketing Plan for a Small Business!"

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