The idea of creating a marketing plan may seem daunting for small business owners, but it doesn’t have to be. Traditional marketing plans require lots of time, effort, research, and more. While traditional marketing plans contain pages of information (think SWOT analysis, 4 P’s, etc.), the main idea of a marketing plan is simple. Give yourself a guideline for how you want to move forward with your marketing. We created a simple, 3 step version of the marketing plan so small business owners can feel comfortable with creating one.
Market Plan Question #1: Who Are You/They
Before you can begin making any marketing plans or initiatives, you first have to evaluate your small business. What is your business? What type of target audience do you have? How much money are you willing to spend on marketing? How long is your marketing plan going to last (a year, quarterly, 6 months)? All these answers should be answered before you can start creating a marketing plan.
What Are Your Goals
Goal setting is an important piece of your marketing plan, because it is essentially what you are trying to accomplish. Understanding your goals will help you make educated decisions when it comes to marketing initiatives. If you want to increase your brand awareness then maybe you focus this year on sponsoring and participating in events. If you are pushing a new product line, then your marketing initiatives will be focused on that.
Whatever goal you create is up to you, but it should be the following: feasible (a goal you can reasonably reach), trackable (you can use analytics to track your progress), and it should align with your business’s branding.
Choosing Marketing Initiatives
Once you understand your target audience (and yourself) and you’ve created feasible goals, you can now get to the fun part. Actually coming up with marketing ideas. Don’t be afraid to try new marketing avenues, like newspaper advertising or radio ads, just remember that you need to track your progress.
A marketing plan is a guideline, NOT a “set in stone” plan. Give yourself room to pivot and change directions if need be. The plan is there to help you reach your goals and to remind yourself of what you are trying to accomplish.
For a deeper dive into marketing plans and how to create one, check out the video below!
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Feel free to share your thoughts with me, I can be reached at vivian@theseasonedmarketer.com!
Looking for more free marketing tips and content specifically for small business owners? Check out our podcast, S.O.B. Marketing Podcast. Every Wednesday we discuss a new topic to help small business owners take on marketing on their own. Listen to our episode of the S.O.B. Marketing podcast wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube! Have a topic you want us to discuss? Email us at Help@TheSeasonedMarketer.com!
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