Creating a marketing plan for your small business

Table of Contents

1. Strategic overview
2. Market research
3. Pricing
4. Digital plan

A marketing plan is a roadmap that outlines your marketing strategy. Building a plan around clear objectives will help you prioritize activities and your allocation of resources like time, money, and staff. This prioritization helps to generate the highest return on investment. The best marketing plan will be directly linked to your business plan. It will detail specific marketing tactics and how they will support your business goals.

1. Strategic overview

Start building the marketing plan by asking key questions of yourself and any other key stakeholders. The answers to these questions will build the skeleton of the strategic overview of your marketing plan. Sample marketing plan questions:

• What problem are you solving? Describe the customer pain points you solve with your product or service. What is your differentiator or value-add? What are you offering that no one else has yet offered?
• What is your target market and target customer? You may have more than one target market, in which case, list them all. Be as specific as you can. Think about who is the most likely to use your business or service. Is it parents in their 30s? Business owners in a rural area? If your business appeals to a wide range of people, consider creating “customer profiles” that describe the specific types of people you will target. Different customer types often need different marketing tactics, and you will want to create detailed correlating plans.
• What methods will you employ to sell your goods or services? For example, you might sell online, through third-party websites, direct via a retail outlet etc. Knowing your channels will inform your marketing tactics. For example, the tactics of an online-only business will differ from those with a storefront because one needs to account for driving foot traffic.
• How can you build credibility? Describe steps to spread awareness of your knowledge and experience, e.g. speaking at industry events, customer-generated positive stories, data supporting a proven track record.
• Who can you partner with? Identify two or three possible marketing partners who sell to the customers you want to reach. Invite them to discuss a joint marketing initiative and how it could be mutually beneficial.

2. Market research

By studying your target consumer and gathering information about their needs, you will be better able to communicate with them and show them why they want your product or service. This market research should be completed when building your business plan, and it is also a key part of developing your marketing plan. Make sure to document:

• Direct market research. Which methods of market research did you use? The market is always changing, so how will you continue using market research through your business’s lifetime?
• SWOT analysis. “SWOT” refers to assessing your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This will highlight a strategic direction for your business. For example, exploit your internal strengths to maximize your external opportunities. You can simply list these and detail how you can lower or increase their impacts, or you can complete the chart in this downloadable marketing plan template.
• Customer and competitor insights and analysis. Document key findings about potential customers and competitors. How will you use these to establish your business’s foothold in the marketplace? What are your differentiators and value-adds, and why do they matter to your customers?
• Future trends. Outline the way your industry has changed through the years and how it might continue to change. How will your business need to change to take advantage of, or offset, those trends?

3. Pricing

Generally, pricing will be most heavily dictated by your budget, P&L documents, and your business plan. However, market research will be key to determining if your pricing decisions are competitive, and how you market your goods and services accordingly. Try the following approach:

• Document current pricing. List the prices or ranges of prices you plan on charging customers for all your goods and services.
• Compare with competitors. Do research on your competitors. Create a list of their competing goods or services, along with the price they’re charging. Assess how your prices compare.
• Justify your pricing. Now that you know how your pricing compares, you can adjust your marketing approach accordingly. Is your price lower because you cater to those who value a good deal? Is your price higher because you are a luxury good intended for elite consumers who understand quality? Incorporate these talking points into your advertising and content marketing.

4. Digital plan

The future is digital. If you don’t already have an online presence, you will need to begin planning for one. Refer to your overview to determine how important the digital approach will be to your overall goals, but know that in today’s market, it is recommended that all businesses have some sort of digital plan. Components to consider:

• Website. Do you have a website? Should you be building one? How do you or will you attract online traffic to your website? If you do not have website-savvy staff, there are many contractors and consultants you could seek out to do the work, or even just review and improve what is already in place.
• Leads and automation. How will you encourage the collection of contact details for prospective customers? How will you maintain a customer database? Will you use email marketing as a strategy? If so, how will you keep in contact with customers automatically?
• Social media. Many businesses think that social media is a free, easy way to build brand awareness. At this point, however, without strategic use of the platforms it can be impossible to break through the noise and be seen on prospective consumers’ timelines. Be thoughtful in which platforms you will use. How will you use them and what content will you share? Discuss why they will be the most useful for your business. Be prepared to treat social media as a platform for customer service and have a plan for responding to customer comments or messages.
• Advertising. Will you be advertising online? Which online platforms will you use – Google Ads, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.? Are you prepared to set goals and track the success internally, or will you hire a digital media firm?
• Content marketing. Will you be creating original content, such as a blog, or submitting articles to industry publications? Will you incorporate this into your advertising strategy, and if so, how? Will you pay to boost blogs with Google Ads, send out articles using your email marketing, or share them on LinkedIn and pay to boost those posts?

Summary

Download our template and complete the prompts to start your plan. The more detailed the plan, the better, but the scale should match the size of your team and the resources your have available to implement the plan. Building a marketing plan will help identify how you can stand out and attract customers, to grow sales and meet business goals.