How to Create Marketing Plan that Works?

It is really amazing that many small businesses don't create marketing plan. Marketing is the most vital aspect of any small business, it accounts for 80% of small business success. Many times the task to create marketing plan is put on the back burner somewhere after buying new furniture for your office and printing some cool business cards.

What is a Marketing Plan?

We have understood from the Net Profit Equation that a small business must have traffic and conversion, i.e. sell something, before there can be net profit.

And that is what Marketing is all about:
Bringing the Sales in.

If marketing is about bringing the sales in, then to create marketing plan is about figuring out HOW the sales will be made. No one plans to fail, although many fail to plan. No plan equals to no sales, and no sales means that your small business is not going to last very long.

Research Your Marketing Plan

When you start to create marketing plan, you should make sure you have answers to basic marketing questions like:

Who are your Competitors?

• What are they doing that is resulted in their success?
• How are they executing their small business marketing plan?
• What are the things that are unique and appealing about their website, sales materials, and marketing collaterals?

Pay special attention to those businesses that seem to be industry leaders in your target market. Call the company and ask for product brochures, browse their websites for ideas to create marketing plan.

Who are your Customers?

• What is their age group?
• What is their average income?
• Where can they be found?

How Does Your Customers Get to Know Your Product or Service?

• How and where can your customers find your products?
• How do you deliver your product or service into the hands of your customers?
• What's the most effective method to do so?

Take notes as you go. You need to know where you are before you can figure out where you want to be. Once you have the above questions answered, your small business marketing plan will literally write itself.

Executing Your Marketing Plan

Most small businesses have marketing tactics such as distributing flyers, attending business networking sessions or running a holiday promotions. If you create a marketing plan, you would be able to tie all these marketing tactics into a coherent synergistic marketing plan strategy, instead of just piece-wise marketing tactics.

Here's 3 points to remember when executing your marketing plan strategy.

Listen to Your Market...Use Direct Response Marketing

Design your marketing predominantly around direct response marketing.

Execute your marketing plan, and then listen to what your market is telling you. There is a saying, "The only constant in life is change". Adjust your marketing plan, according to the changing market conditions. Always test, measure and improve the responses from your marketing campaign.

Divide and Conquer

Divide your marketing plan into small action steps that can be completed in a specific time frame. You can start with the obvious, such as setting up a website with an email newsletter subscription, or a blog to keep in touch and obtain feedback from your customers, if that is more suited to your type of business. Remember, inch by inch, it's a cinch!

Prioritize the things you "must have" versus the things that it's "nice to have", and allocate your resources accordingly.

Slow and steady wins the race

Be consistent. Have the "Kaizen" mentality of improving your marketing by 1% every day. That's over 300% improvement over a year, provided you do it consistently! Committing to improving your marketing plan is often the definitive line between success and failure. If need be, hire a NetProfitQuest Business Coach to provide you with that necessary push and guidance to move ahead of your competitors :)

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