How to Create a Marketing Plan for Your Small Business
Without a clearly defined marketing plan, small businesses tend to chase trends or pile budget behind marketing efforts that may not deliver impactful results. A written marketing plan creates guardrails to protect your time and budget while allowing for flexibility to double down on high-performing campaigns - or sponsor that T-ball team next spring.
Here are a few ways to create an annual marketing plan you can stick to.
What Should You Include In a Marketing Plan?
Think of your marketing plan as your playbook. It should explain your broader marketing strategy, establish your goals, and define the channels and tactics you plan to use to achieve those short—and long-term goals.
How detailed your plan is is up to you, but it should serve the whole organization. The more people are involved (think internal employees, agencies, vendors), the more defined it should be. It’s worth getting a set of fresh eyes to spot any discrepancies or information you may have overlooked - we can help with that.
How to Write a Marketing Plan, Step-by-Step
Every small business marketing plan has a few key elements, and it really starts with a top-down approach. Start with who you are, what you want to achieve, and the tactics you believe will get you there. Remember, a marketing plan outlines the direction of your marketing and business, so tie all of your marketing initiatives to business initiatives.
The Business Summary
Even if it’s just you or a small team, include a short business summary describing your organization, mission, and surface-level information about your product or services. It should include:
Your company name
Your location
Your mission statement
Some marketing plans include a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis; even if you don’t go full SWOT, it’s worth mentioning where your past and current marketing performs well, what you don’t have time for, and key competitors to keep in mind.
The Business Initiatives
Next, outline your organization’s business objectives for the next year (if you’re writing an annual marketing plan) and include a description of the initiatives, the goal, and how you’ll measure success.
For example, Sovis Media’s goal might be to grow through new customer acquisition. The goal is to attract new clients, and the metric could be increasing new customer revenue by 20% year over year.
You might have many goals, but focus on two to three top priorities for your marketing plan. You’ll probably find that achieving a few “big” objectives will directly or indirectly benefit many of your other goals.
The Target Market
Also referred to as audience, define who your marketing should reach. Most organizations have a few defined audience personas or groups of potential customers who share similar demographical information like income, location, family size, interests, or other characteristics. Defining your target market greatly impacts where you focus your marketing efforts. B2B companies should also list their target industries. Sovis Media works with non-profits, brick-and-mortar retailers, and automotive and technical service providers. As a result, our most productive marketing efforts are on LinkedIn - that may or may not be the case for you!
The Competition
Competitive analysis will briefly explain the top competitors vying for your target market. Include information on what your competitors do well, such as unique features or product offerings, aggressive pricing, or brand prestige. You don’t have to go into deep detail here, but provide enough information that any agency or vendor can quickly spot what other businesses in your market are doing well and where there are opportunities to win customers.
The Strategy
Define your marketing strategy based on the seven P’s of marketing, or the traditional “extended marketing mix.” Add additional notes and tactics for each of the seven P’s as they relate to your marketing plan and business initiatives:
Product - Broadly speaking, what is your product or service and what is its value proposition? What problem does it solve for your clients or customers?
Price - How does your price compare to competitors? Justify the number internally (based on your pricing strategy) and externally to customers.
Place—Where do you do business? Brick-and-mortar stores might do most of their business in a single city, while service providers typically operate in a defined service area. Online businesses might sell products or software as a service (SaaS) globally!
Promotion - How, where, and how frequently will you promote your products or services? List the platforms, tactics, and other information to guide channel-specific efforts.
People—Who’s doing what? If it’s just you, this part is simple. If it’s a small team, clearly define responsibilities based on experience, bandwidth, or interest—or just work with us.
Process - How does a post get published? Who approves blogs? Set the workflow for turning a task into a viral social post. (Results may vary.)
Physical evidence - Who confirms the work is done? Who analysis performs or tweaks strategy? Think of physical evidence a taking the pulse of your marketing plan, performance, and overall direction.
The Budget
Establishing a marketing budget requires a lot of thought and no small amount of number-crunching. Most small businesses spend roughly 2-5% of their total revenue on marketing, though younger, less established companies spend much more than that to raise brand awareness and win new customers. B2C companies also tend to spend a little more on marketing than B2B, even if they’re relatively established in the marketplace.
The Channels and the Tools
Choose where you’ll market. Most small businesses should be active on social media and email marketing and have an SEO-rich website to win curious customers. With those channels in place, you may need to invest in supporting software; think Buffer post scheduling for social media or MailChimp for email marketing. Where you build and host your website are also marketing expenses, so keep track of those as well!
The Marketing Plan Timeline
What does one week, month, and quarter of marketing look like for your brand? Establish a manageable cadence for posting on social media, publishing blogs, or sending emails over the most realistic timeline possible. Some industries or locations have wide swings in sales due to seasonal shifts; retailers are always busy leading into the holidays, and your local bike shop might be quiet mid-winter. Adjust your marketing plan to suit your industry and your business, which could mean allotting more paid spend during Q4 to support Black Friday sales or similar tactics.
Also, schedule specific campaigns you know your company will run based on the aforementioned seasonality. Some retailers run fall sales to move summer inventory, while HVAC companies might push maintenance appointments between peak heating and cooling seasons. Put these on your timeline early so you can prepare well for launch!
Planning Breeds Accountability
A small business marketing plan’s chief goal may be to lay out future marketing initiatives and business goals, but it has another important purpose: it keeps you and your team accountable. If there’s no goal to send lead-generating emails, sending two per quarter is okay. If the goal was 50, well, there’s a discussion to be had. Even the hardest working, most well-run small businesses need accountability, and a marketing plan is a great place to build it into your company’s expectations and responsibilities.
We can help. Sovis Media has helped Northern Michigan businesses and non-profits get more out of their marketing and do it on a budget. Let’s talk - the coffee is on us!