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New free templates | PDF's Rule! | Small Business | Gen Y | Budget Printing
The Marketing Corner
By: Jay Berkowitz, CEO www.tengoldenrules.com
Writing a Small Business Marketing Plan
A Simple outline of how to develop a marketing plan for your small business
The marketing plan is an important road map for your marketing group and management team to chart where you are going, and it provides the means to measure if you made it to where you were headed. A well written marketing plan determines where you want to take your business and how you will measure your success.
How to develop a marketing plan
The first step to take when developing your small business marketing plan is to gather all relevant information to determine the current status of the companies’ sales and marketing efforts. Compile a section of the plan called Background. Include information you can source from:
· Past business or marketing plans that you can reference?
· Any research information is available?
· Critical sales information or financial reports can you compile?
With this information in hand, prepare a snapshot of the company’s current status in terms of key business indicators.
· Sales summary
· Sales by key categories
· Sales trends
· Number of prospects and customers
It is very valuable to create simple charts of these key business metrics. This will allow you to identify trends and will help set goals for the coming year.
Another valuable tool in the analysis stage of writing a marketing plan is to examine the 80:20 rule. In the majority of businesses, over 80% of revenue comes from less than 20% of your customers. Who are the best customers? How can you treat them differently to make them feel special and appreciated? How can you find more customers like your best customers?
Many small business marketing plans include a SWOT Analysis. Prepare a summary of your business Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats relative to key competitors. This simple tool gives you a one page snap shot of your business and makes it easy for you to determine where you opportunities in the coming year.
Writing the small business marketing plan
Now you know where the company stands and key business metrics have been identified. You are ready to begin writing the small business marketing plan.
The key business metrics and your 80:20 analysis should help you identify your Target Markets. How can you acquire the most customers most effectively? Who are these target customers? How can you define them by demographics or market sizes?
The next section of the small business marketing plan is your Objectives. The objectives section defines your goals for the coming year. These should be clearly defined, quantified and measurable. While your plan may contain some non-fact based goals, you should attempt to define goals that can be accurately measured to determine the success of your plan. You should use the objectives to measure your success throughout the year.
The Strategies section of the business marketing plan is next. The Objectives section defines ‘what you are going to accomplish’ the Strategies are how you are going to accomplish your goals. Are you going to use media or direct mail to reach prospects? Are you going to develop a new e-commerce website to sell to customers directly? Do you want to test pay-per-click search engine marketing, one of the hottest marketing tactics?
The Budget section sets the spending guideline for your plan. The budget defines how much you plan to spend to accomplish your objectives and it is often broken out by month or quarter. Do you need to invest in a major development project in the first quarter to hit your plan the rest of the year? Do you need to maintain budget flexibility to allow for cuts if the company isn’t on plan in the final months of the year?
Creating the Calendar is the final step in writing a marketing plan. Laying out all of your activities in a graphical format helps to identify when events take place and helps to ensure that plans don’t overlap. Planning for your company’s high seasons and planning around holidays and special events is important. When do you need to start promoting the holiday sales season? Can you plan a major launch event around the Super Bowl or Thanksgiving?
Once you have a draft of your small business marketing plan - start socializing it with key executives, business partners and influencers in the organization. Is there a particularly influential board member who can contribute to your business marketing plan early? Can you score some points if you get buy-in form your key counterpart in the sales department before presenting the plan to management?
Finally, once your small business marketing plan is complete, create a one page Executive Summary of the plan and place this on the first page. And, don’t forget to ‘dress it up’ for presentation for key stakeholders. If you are presenting on PowerPoint, take the time to include charts and visuals to help make your case. If the plan will be distributed in printed format, use some clean and clever graphics and professional printing to make the plan stand out and look professional. Following these steps will show you how to develop a marketing plan for your small business. Good Luck!
Jay Berkowitz Marketing Professional with over twenty years of experience. He has been behind the marketing for Fortune 500 brands: McDonald's and Coca-Cola, and has developed online and offline strategies for AT&T, Sprint, and leading health and fitness website eDiets.com. Mr. Berkowitz is the Founder and President of www.tengoldenrules.com, a consulting business specializing in developing a marketing plan and internet marketing. Mr. Berkowitz is a popular presenter at conferences and
New free templates | PDF's Rule! | Small Business | Gen Y | Budget Printing