Do you need a marketing plan to get your voice heard?

Small business owners often don’t have time to stop and plan their next move. The challenge with marketing planning is, it takes time to think about it, develop it, agree it, write it down, and then deliver the actions on it.

Yet small businesses desperately need their marketing to work efficiently and effectively – and having no plan means making decisions on a weekly or monthly basis, which are not necessarily working towards the same goal. The business flows, but it flows up and down, and it’s hard to achieve consistent sales. (Bryony Thomas talks about this in her book, Watertight Marketing, which I recommend reading.)

If you’re already short of time and people, it becomes even more essential to build a consistent level of marketing, which gets you talking to more of the people who will care about your product or service.

I’ve been thoughtful about this since hearing Drayton Bird talk at the Copy Cabana in Bournemouth. His topic was mistakes, and he sounded humble about how many came from personal experience. He pointed out that most businesses ignore the fundamental question, “Why should I buy your product from you?”

For me, this is the cornerstone of your marketing plan – there should be one reason, which you can explain quickly to anyone.  

Drayton Bird also sounded somewhat sceptical of marketing and marketers (a feeling which I’ve perceived often in job interviews, executive level meetings, and even in the pub!) which he succinctly explained. Marketing is not complicated; to do it well, a business needs to work out these three things:

• How to win more customers
• How to get them to spend more
• How to keep them longer

Small businesses have an advantage over large ones: the people are deeply passionate about what they do. You can win more customers by letting prospects and the internal team see that passion. You might be selling to different types of customer, and each has a different reason why they buy from you. (The fancy term is segmentation, a practice which I’m beginning to believe could be harmful for small businesses. Doing too many things, trying to appeal to too many people can kill the energy.) Once you know who they are and what they need, I think it’s critical to get your decisions aligned, focus on what you are good at, and make sure everyone working in the business knows what you, as the owner, would say on the phone to a new prospect.

Last month at Freelance Mum networking, I talked briefly about why I think women are effectively changing the traditional face of business. Where women lead a niche business, they know what to say, because they’ve chosen an activity they love. All their sales and marketing methods are underpinned by conscious – or possibly sub-conscious – positive connection; we find who we want to work with and move forward from there. Relationships with business partners and customers are built on a genuine level, bringing positive strength back into the business. And, if the business makes and sells products, customers buy because they love the product or what it stands for. Since acknowledging this, I believe keeping the flow of positive energy in business is more important than any written plan.

To make your marketing count, you need to become more visible and direct the positive energy, to ensure others who may need your service can clearly see how it would help them. Test whether you’re doing the right things – try a marketing approach a few times and ask your customers before you give up. Again, it’s a flow of activity with a set of measures in place. You will need the right person or team in place to make this happen, who understands the reason ‘why’ and the energy behind it as well as the owner does. And if you are growing and serving different customer needs, it would be worth putting enough resource in place to cover separate marketing for each.

Drayton Bird’s talk inspired me to update my website, and start hiring more help to run 27 Marketing, because my business is founded on the simplest process of selling my time. I’ll work to understand what a business does, who for, how you help them, and what the marketing says now, and critically, what you do after you’ve sold to them. There’s a bit of emotional magic and quiet logic in how I help small businesses: by listening to the owners and writing their case studies, I hold up a mirror to show a business how good they are – as told by their existing customers. Pop that feedback into your marketing flow, and you can prove how your business will help more like them.

Your business probably does need a formal marketing plan, but you certainly need clarity within the whole business, before you write a single word.