Creating a Marketing Plan

No business owner ever decided one day, without any forethought or planning to open their business in hopes that it would succeed. Or if they did, the likelihood of its success would be very slim. Business owners know that it takes months, sometimes years of planning before opening a business. Key to your business success revolves around one word, marketing, and how this breaks down into setting marketing goals and communications strategies, a marketing budget and remembering to be agile in your marketing efforts.

Prior to setting marketing goals every business owner must perform a strategic and detailed situational analysis of the marketplace. Once this is done, marketing goals can be thought out and put in place. Marketing goals should include who your target audience is and what the personas are within that target audience. After personas are decided, with the help of a creative agency, you can decide what your logo and graphics will look like. Then comes deciding how to communicate with your customer and which specific media to use; print, TV, radio, collateral and a properly branded website. Last of all, set a specific goal of your financial needs you want to achieve with your marketing efforts. For instance, make your goal specific with an increase in margin on a set number of products and services or “X” % increase in sales.

While there is no magic number for your marketing budget, a good rule of thumb is to dedicate at least 10% of revenue. Some companies dedicate 50% of their revenues. If you can do this – great! Whether it is a little or a lot, be very careful to spend it on the right marketing initiatives and to constantly evaluate and re-evaluate where your marketing dollars are being spent and re-allocate as necessary.

The word agile comes to mind when watching a star track athlete. In the warm-up routine of a track race, the athlete is loose and limber, but when the camera shows a close-up of his or her face and looks into his or her eyes, the athlete has a laser focus on the task at hand – winning! When the race starts, the runner paces himself or herself to maintain an edge, adjusts his or her pace, and when the proper time comes, they sprint to the finish line. The same applies to marketing; train hard, have a plan for winning, be loose and limber, change pace and plans when necessary. By doing so your success rate of winning the race over your competitors will increase greatly.

Following these three basic steps to creating a marketing plan will give you the basics to begin your marketing efforts and will help you on your roadmap to success. For additional tips on marketing a small business, we encourage you to read our past blogs and sign up for future ones so they can be delivered right to your mailbox.