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Creating a Small Business Marketing Plan

Creating a Small Business Marketing Plan

By: VentureHow Staff Writer

Updated on: May 19, 2021

In the good old — or bad old — days, creating a small business marketing plan often consisted of expensive media and limited options for do-it-yourself entrepreneurs.

Fortunately, times have changed. Today, creating a small business marketing plan is easy in that there are a lot of options for D.I.Y.ers but also is complicated because of the variety, variability, and velocity in the field of digital marketing.

Advertising in expensive newspapers and magazines and on expensive television and radio stations is still an attractive option for large and well-heeled companies. However, small business owners like yourself might want to consider converting your marketing and advertising plan into a marketing plan.

“Clearly, technology has changed marketing a lot,” wrote small business adviser and business owner Tim Berry in an article for the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) entitled “10 Essentials of A Marketing Plan in 2016.” “We fast forward through ads on television and block them on our devices. We have amplified word of mouth in social media. Another thing for sure: the marketing mix, the tactics, is changing rapidly. Goodbye to the yellow pages, hello Facebook. Goodbye public relations, hello social media. Goodbye advertising, hello content marketing.”

“The marketing mix, the tactics, are changing rapidly. Goodbye to the yellow pages, hello Facebook. Goodbye public relations, hello social media. Goodbye advertising, hello content marketing,” Tim Berry, Small business owner, and advisor.

A marketing plan is a document that lists how a company intends to market its products and services in the future. Given the multitude of options, revising a plan is a prudent course of action. In other words, you should regularly keep track of what is and isn’t working and make the necessary adjustments. For example, a company can survey customers about whether they learned about the products via brochures or conventions or e-mails and refocused future marketing efforts on the most cost-effective marketing methods.

You need a marketing plan because your company’s efforts to inform prospective customers about your product or service need a theme, a strategy, and execution. Marketing budgets shouldn’t be set in stone, but it’s challenging to measure the success of each prospective marketing method if salespeople are using a mix of marketing methods and not keeping track of what’s working and not sharing what’s working.

Marketing plans have many possible components. The “10 Essentials” article says the ten essential elements are target marketing, messaging, media, pricing, channels, promotions, tasks and significant milestones, essential metrics, review schedules, and budgets.

If you want to put together a marketing plan that’s financially feasible for a small business owner, there are several steps you can take. Here are a few of them:

Creating a Small Business Marketing Plan: Crucial Considerations

1. Research The Media Market

Small business owners should make finding a list of publications and broadcast outlets that reach their prospective customers an integral part of crafting their marketing plan. If your products and services are designed for a particular demographic group, you need to find the media that reach it so you can, for example, try to get interviewed by the right media print and broadcast outlets. If your company is in a specific industry, you need to find out the industry’s trade magazines.

2. Aim for Free Media Appearances

A small company’s marketing plan should include a program for free media. Consequently, finding out about free media opportunities is an essential part of the process of devising a marketing plan. Creating a Small Business Marketing PlanThe plan should be based on the understanding that one of the best ways a company can market its products and services is NOT explicitly to sell its products and services. Many media outlets would love to have experts in essential topics their readers are interested in write columns on their expertise. If your business is tax consulting, for example, you can volunteer to write articles for local business publications on taxes or volunteer to answer phone callers’ questions as a guest on a television or radio station. These free media appearances can help small business owners establish themselves as experts prospective customers trust — and thus serve as an implicit way to market the company.

3. Focus on SEO Rankings

In the old days, placing ads in the Yellow Pages was part of a small company’s marketing plan. The Yellow Pages is passe today. Today, millions of people look for products via Google or another search engine. Fortunately, companies can have some control over their search engine optimization (SEO) rankings. Learning how is essential for a company formulates its marketing plan. In general, a company’s SEO rankings can improve via free media appearances, making its website more user-friendly, posting high-quality articles on its website, and trading blogs with other websites so both websites can increase the number of their links. However, the company should also learn about the methods of industry-specific search engines so it can formulate a more specific marketing plan.

4. Plan In-House ‘Ads’

The in-house videos and audios that the small companies produce will be better if they’re not explicitly promotional if their substance is leaders in the company conveying their expertise on a relevant topic.

In the old days, paying for television and radio commercials was often part of a small company’s marketing plan. Today, small companies should make producing their ads as part of their marketing plan because modern technology has made this approach more cost-effective than it was in the past. Consequently, figuring out the cost of producing videos and audios and how to create them is a crucial part of devising an effective marketing plan. The in-house videos and audios that the small companies produce will be better if they’re not explicitly promotional if their substance is leaders in the company conveying their expertise on a relevant topic. “Next to Google, the biggest search engine is YouTube,” notes the article “Seven Ways to Engage Your Customers Using Social Media.” “Posting valuable and informative videos is powerful. If you want to get recognized quickly, then start posting videos.”

5. Research Social Media Opportunities

“Posting valuable and informative videos is powerful. If you want to get recognized quickly, then start posting videos,” Shep Hyken.

Small companies can’t market effectively via social media until and unless they find out the most effective social media opportunities for companies in their industry. Many industries have their own Facebook and LinkedIn groups. Studying these groups and industry-specific groups on other social media platforms should be an integral part of formulating a company’s marketing plan. Which groups are receptive to companies posting blogs about themselves or blogs offering advice on industry topics? Which groups have audiences that regularly interact with each other? Which groups give companies a chance to raise their profile? Once these questions are answered, a small company should find it easier to plan the content and frequency of its social media blogs.

6. Leverage Networking Opportunities

It’s easy to get too caught up in the new ways of marketing and neglect the old ways. Yes, networking the old-fashioned way still helps — and sometimes is inexpensive. Small companies need to raise their profile via conventions and meetings of local business and trade industry groups. Finding out the best conferences to attend and present exhibits at is essential to formulating an effective marketing plan. So is finding out the names of local business groups, their schedules, their average attendance, and other information. Once a company obtains this information, it can better plan how to market itself at these conventions and meetings. Many local groups are receptive to letting industry experts make presentations at their events. This is a surefire way to raise your company’s profile.

You can spend days on end writing down ideas for a marketing plan, but the result won’t be valid unless you also take the time to research and learn about the media market, free media opportunities, SEO rankings, how to produce videos and audios, social media opportunities, and networking opportunities.

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