You may question if you really need to spend time devising a marketing plan for your small business. If you want to reach new customers in your target market, and convince them to buy your products or services, then a plan will help to make that happen.
A marketing plan is a document outlining your future marketing efforts and goals. It shows who you’re trying to speak to, how you’ll reach them and the money required to do so. The plan identifies your target market, your brand/ product/ service’s value proposition, the marketing campaigns to run, and the metrics to use to assess results.
By documenting your plan, it keeps people accountable, from the business owner to the support staff. They all have a part to play.
What’s the Purpose of a Marketing Plan?
1. Identifies target audience: when you can picture your ideal customer or persona, it makes it easier to know how to talk to them, where to find them and how to solve their problems.
2. Shows how the marketing budget helps to achieve goals: a realistic, impressive and well-developed marketing plan gives stakeholders the confidence to fund it. The outcomes of marketing activities are defined and measurable, so the return on investment is clear. Plus, there’s a roadmap of how and when each aspect will happen.
3. Keeps team members accountable: SMART goals with measurable outcomes motivate team members to play their part in achieving marketing goals and overall business aims within a definite timeframe. Their KPIs will directly affect overall business success.
4. Determines which marketing channels to use: with clearly defined goals and strategies, you can identify the best ways to spend your marketing budget using market research and data analytics rather than guesswork.
5. Benchmarks marketing success: with set metrics underpinning marketing objectives, it’s easy to see if marketing campaigns and marketing initiatives have fulfilled their brief within set timelines. For example, have email subscribers reached x amount or is brand awareness higher amongst your target market?
6. Coordinates business goals and objectives: marketing doesn’t exist in a silo, it works in tandem with departments like sales or customer service. Goals for the marketing team will influence the activities for other teams. A marketing plan needs to be aligned with overall business goals to ensure marketing activities take place with those goals in mind. A business goal of a % increase in market share will filter down to specific KPIs for sales as well as marketing.
What’s the Most Important Part of a Marketing Plan?
Knowing your target market is vital when it comes to marketing. You need to know and understand your customers and potential customers with robust market research. Then, you can plan how and when to reach them with your marketing mix.
Through market research, you can determine the most effective marketing initiative to use to connect with that demographic. It could be email marketing, social media campaigns or advertising for example.
It’s valuable to think about your target customer now, as well as in the coming years. If you’re a startup fashion entrepreneur, for example, think about what’s important to your customers now. That may be firmly focused on the niche style and price. But market trends show an increasing focus on sustainability, so your customer’s likely to place more importance on the materials used and ethics of your brand. You could consider using recycled materials and natural fabrics instead of synthetic. Communicating that shift would be a key part of your marketing plan.
What’s the Importance of the SWOT Analysis in Preparing a Marketing Plan?
A SWOT marketing analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) is a key component of a marketing strategy. It can help to identify potential opportunities or identify threats before they become unavoidable. Along with competitor analysis, it will show where you need to focus your efforts to gain the best results. This information filters down to actionable items on your marketing plan.
Say you’ve identified a weakness in the number of conversions on your website. It could be a flaw in the user journey that needs to be addressed. Perhaps your marketing messaging isn’t hitting the spot. You’ll need a plan of how to get potential customers to know, like and trust you so that they convert from leads to paying customers. That goal will determine your marketing activities – a change in your content marketing and social media marketing, for example.
Maybe the threat relates to competitors ranking higher than your business on search engines. That can be addressed with SEO strategic marketing work. That then presents a digital marketing opportunity. If you know you have a strong new product or service to release, the launch campaign will be a priority feature on your marketing plan.
Don’t Set and Forget Your Marketing Plan
Remember that a marketing plan isn’t set in stone. A successful marketing plan is actually a planning process, not just a finalised document. It needs to be reviewed and revised regularly.
Get started with our simple one-page marketing planning template
Book a free 30 minute discovery call to see how Phil can keep your business planning on track and connect on LinkedIn.
