Why every small business needs a marketing plan

According to Vendasta, 47% of small business owners run marketing entirely on their own. And most of these small businesses don’t have a marketing plan. Before you think, I don’t need one, can you honestly say that your current marketing campaigns generate consistent leads that convert into customers?

The problem is without a plan, there’s no strategy behind your marketing. It’s completely random.

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You’ll dabble in social media because an expert told you to. You’ll spend a little on Google Adwords or Facebook advertising. Maybe you sink a chunk of change into a print ad in that magazine you read all the time. But you can’t say for sure that it’s resulted in a bunch of new customers. 

Most marketing newbies focus on tactics or what I like to call shiny objects. But without a strategy (your big-picture planning), your marketing won’t work. 

You’ll see money rapidly flowing out of your business, but not much flowing in. This is where your marketing plan becomes critical.

Let’s take a look at what is a marketing plan?

WHAT IS A MARKETING PLAN?

Think of your marketing plan as your business’s blueprint for success. It’s an operational plan for getting and retaining customers. It outlines the overarching marketing strategy and tactics that you’ll use to get your target market to know you, like you, and do business with you regularly. 

• It gives you a clear picture of your target market. Who are they? Where do they live? What do they do? What do they struggle with?
• It helps you to create marketing messages that resonate and ultimately get results to help you grow your business.  
• It tells you exactly what you need to do next. So, where to advertise? What to offer? How to capture leads? How to engage with prospects? What systems to put in place, what metrics to manage, and much more.

A marketing plan is not a business plan.

Both are independent documents that need to coexist. A business plan focuses on the goals of the company as a whole. It includes the company’s mission statement, vision, financial goals, and sales and marketing strategy. The marketing plan focuses on how it will achieve these goals.

WHY DO YOU NEED A MARKETING PLAN?

Because winging it won’t work. 

I know. I made many costly advertising mistakes during my entrepreneurial infancy. I spent thousands of dollars on ads that resulted in zero customer acquisitions. Nothing!

I’ve also coached hundreds of small business owners. From experience, I can tell you that if you don’t know why you’re investing in pay-per-click or opening a Facebook account, or how to monitor and measure its performance, you’re not going to get the results you want or need.

A report from Content Marketing Institute revealed that documenting your marketing strategy gives you a 538% greater chance of being successful.

Quite simply, professionals have plans.

Teachers have a curriculum they follow. Doctors follow a treatment plan; pilots follow a flight plan. Why?

Because when the stakes are high, you need a plan. You need to know what to do next week, next month, in six months, in a year.

And it needs to evolve.

Like technology, your marketing plan should be flexible. It’s not something that you create, look at once, and never refer to again. It’s also not something you blindly follow for the next three years. Your business isn’t static and neither is your plan. It needs to be agile.

As you implement your marketing campaigns you should be tracking and measuring its success and optimizing where need be.

• How many new leads did you generate from your free webinar?
• What was the average engagement rate on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook?
• How much traffic did your website gain during the month? Do you know which pages performed well?
• Which Google Adwords garnered the most click-throughs?

Perhaps you find that Instagram doesn’t deliver a return on investment, but LinkedIn is flying—so you shift and focus your efforts there.

Maybe you wrote a blog article that doubled traffic to your site. Now you know what topics connect with your prospects, so you decide to create more content around it.

That’s why having a marketing plan is so important. Without one, without defined key performance indicators (KPIs), you can’t know what’s working and what isn’t.

But you need the right plan for your business.

INTRODUCING THE 1-PAGE MARKETING PLAN

The problem with many marketing plans is they’re overwhelming. They’re pages and pages long—with graphs, stats, and information that isn’t really going to help you grow your business.

Just look at any of the top-performing articles by searching: What is a marketing plan? You’ll find multiple options to choose from—too much to know which is the right choice.

A marketing plan needs to be simple. It’s something that you take out regularly and review. You need to see it. Unfortunately, if it’s 90-pages long, it’s probably going to get read once and never again.

That’s why I developed The 1-Plan Marketing Plan template. Think of it as an entrepreneur’s small business encyclopedia. It's an implementation breakthrough that’s simple and easy to do. It’s a nine-step framework that you can literally put together in 30 minutes. 

• It’s built for entrepreneurs.
• It’s built to be practical.
• It’s built to be something you use, not leave hidden in a drawer. You can place it on your wall or your desk and refer to it routinely.

Now I’ve used this marketing plan example in my businesses, and with many of my coaching clients. I know it works.

If you want to get cracking on building your marketing playbook so to speak, check out my full article here. I even include five examples of completed 1-Page Marketing Plans. You can use them as thought-starters and a guide when filling out your marketing plan template.