Building A Small Business Marketing Plan

If you're planning a big year for your business in 2013 then now is the time to start planning.  Here are a few things you need to think about as you build your marketing plan:

 

Understanding who your prospects are customers are is the most important part of building any marketing plan.  If your business is B2B then understanding their role, what drives them, how they measure success [both business and personal], whether they have the final purchasing decision [if not, you need to know who does and who influences the decision] is essential.  If you have a B2C business you need to know your target audiences' age, gender, lifestyle… their favourite brands, what newspapers they read, etc.  Nowadays it's also essential to know which social networks they use.

 

 

Who are you competing against for customers?  Which companies are you trying to emulate? Which of your competitors market well [and which ones don't]? What is that customers like about one competitor and hate about another?  Study the marketing strategies of your competitors - it'll be a gold mine of information that will help you learn from their successes and avoid making their mistakes.    

 

 

Be clear about what makes you different.  If you can't explain what you do and why you offer something your competitors can't in less than two sentences you need to think about it some more.  If you're not clear, how do you expect your prospects and customers to be.  Understanding your proposition also makes talking about it much easier and, most importantly, makes it much easier for customers to buy it.  

 

 

When you get the chance to talk to your customers and prospects, what are you going to say?  It could be the difference between they buying from you or a competitor so it's essential to get it right.  Make it simple, thought-provoking and memorable.

  

 

What do you want your audience to do?  How do you persuade your target audience to do it? Do you want them to signing up for a newsletter, visit a blog post or clicking buy on a special offer you are offering via your e-commerce site.  This is most often the piece of the marketing plan that is missing - and one of the most common reasons that 

 

 

These could be bloggers, traditional media journalists, Facebook fans, twitter followers - but there will be people that can indirectly help you to achieve your business goals.  Whoever they are, you need to know who they are in order to use them effectively.

 

 

In the olden days they by-word of all marketing communications activity was campaign.  Multi-layered instruments that ensured that a target audience couldn't fail to get your message, understand your unique selling points, choose your product or service over a competitor's.  More recently the term guerrilla marketing has become more common - it is less strategic, more immediate and takes advantage of ad-hoc opportunities.  While there's definitely a place for guerrilla in your marketing plans, the focus should be on campaigns that utilize both traditional and new media/social channels.

 

When marketing budgets are tight understanding the specific role of each part of a campaign in delivering ultimate success is key and a campaign will ensure that your money works as hard as possible for your business.

 

 

Building a considered and well-planned marketing plan makes it easy to deliver it effectively.  If you've done the work up front you'll understand your target audience; the message will be spot on; it'll focus on what differentiates you from the competition; it'll use the channels/networks that your target audience want you to communicate with them via; and it'll get them to take the actions you want them to.  Most importantly for a small business, it'll be as efficient on resources and cost-effective as possible and enable you to track its results so that you can learn from the experience when you build your next campaign.

 

So, what are you waiting for? For more advice on marketing, PR and social media communications visit www.thinkdifferently.ca, call me on +1 647.773.2677 or email lyndon@thinkdifferently.ca