See What Goes into a Marketing Plan for your Small Business
I bet every time you’ve seen the cart placed before the horse, it never worked, right? So it would follow that this approach in business is doomed to fail also? Yep. If you’re starting out you’ll want to create a marketing plan for your small business BEFORE spending money or worse, your valuable time.
This is not all that complicated, but it’s a necessary step if you want to avoid a few potential pitfalls on the way. Here are 5 suggestions intended to help you create a marketing plan specific to your small business.
5 Great tips to help create a marketing plan for your small business!
Determine your goals – You need one primary goal, and a few smaller intermediate type goals to help motivate and gauge progress along the way. Write them down so all can see and be held accountable.
Define who your audience is – Taking a snapshot of who your ideal customer is, and what they like, dislike, where they hang out and more is a crucial step in making an intelligent marketing plan. Knowing this information ahead of time saves much time and money.
How you intend to market – There are innumerable ways to get your message out, but knowing the best and right way for your particular business can provide you with a clear focus and save resources. Regardless of which method you choose, whether it’s paid ads or organic search marketing, it needs to be the right one for you!
Know what else you need – There will very likely be pieces in the puzzle that are essential to the plan that need to be in pace as well. This can sometimes be a marketing funnel, landing pages or an email marketing sequence.
Set a timeline – Giving your campaign a timeline for implementation and completion is important to a successful marketing plan. It will also help keep all members of the team on task and striving to the goal.