How to Create a Marketing Plan for Your Business
Free Marketing Plan Template
by Marielle Reussink
When clients hire us to help them with their marketing, they usually have a pretty good idea of what they want to do and what channels they want to use. The trouble is, most of them have skipped a couple of steps on their way to those conclusions…
Effective marketing requires strategy, and strategy requires not just knowing what you want to do but why. We use our Six Steps to Success Framework to develop marketing plans - and we want to share this resource with you here.
Before you launch any campaigns or outsource any of your marketing initiatives, it's important to clearly understand what your goals and challenges are, or you could end up wasting time and money on tactics that will never help you reach your objectives.
That’s where a marketing plan comes in.
The purpose of a marketing plan is not to create a pretty document that you would have gotten an A for at school (FYI the same goes for your business plan). The purpose of this document - in whatever shape or form you decide to create it - is to guide your marketing activities to ensure you’re doing the right things for your business.
In a world where the vast majority of start-ups fail, that seems pretty important, right?
Ok, so how does it work?
Step 1: Define Your Objective
In this context, your objective isn’t about where you want to be in five years (although they may be related); it’s about what specifically you want to achieve with your marketing efforts in the short- and long-term.
Defining your objective is all about understanding the marketing funnel, where you’re at now, and what you need to do to achieve your wider business goals.
Understanding the Marketing Funnel and your challenges:
Every potential customer will need to move through the stages of the funnel - from awareness of your business to education about what you do, consideration of your value proposition and finally conversion. Overall, they will also need to be convinced of your branding to trust and choose your business at every step of the funnel.
So what does that mean for you?
If you’ve just launched and no one or very few people know about your business, although your ultimate objective will of course be sales, you first need to tackle the top of the funnel by raising awareness. In terms of channels and activities, this means you will choose those that are optimized to maximize outreach and reach your target customer and your core KPIs will focus on Impressions, Reach and Frequency - not necessarily Sales.
Wait, WHAT!?!
Why???
Think about it: if no one knows about you, how can they choose to buy from you? If no one knows what you stand for and why you’re better than the competition, why would they buy from you?
Once you have achieved a certain level of awareness, you can move your core focus towards the bottom of the funnel and target Sales.
Depending on the stage of your business, your challenges in the funnel may be different. It’s important to understand what these are to make sure you’re doing the right things for your company.
Step 2: Understand Your Target Audience
There is nothing more powerful in marketing than truly understanding your audience, their needs, challenges and desires!
Think about this example: if you sell a product for busy working moms, you know their mornings are consumed with getting kids ready for school and getting themselves to work, but during lunch they have some downtime and might scroll through their phone. Would that not be the ideal moment to post your content?
Clearly, knowing where your target audience spends its time, what they typically do, how they consume media, and how they might go about looking for your product or service, is invaluable to make sure your communications are targeted and relevant!
If you don’t know your audience at all, it’s time to stop! Before you spend another dime or minute of your time, design a little mini persona thinking about their age, profession, interests etc. or you could end up pouring all of your marketing efforts into campaigns that will never reach the people who are most likely to become your customers.
Step 3: Choose Your Channels
If you’ve done a good job in steps 1 and 2, choosing the right channels should be fairly simple.
Every channel has its benefits, requiring a different set of tactics. The key is to play to your strengths, pick your battles and only invest in the ones that will give you the results you want.
Social media will be an obvious place for most businesses to start, but not every platform is great for every business and each has its pros and cons. For example, if you’re a fashion company, Instagram or TikTok are probably ideal places to start. On the other hand, if you’re in B2B selling software, LinkedIn would be a better choice to develop your thought leadership.
On the other hand, just because social media is relatively cheap and easy to set up, doesn’t mean it’s the best or only answer for your business! Depending on your product or service, attending industry events, running your own events, driving PR etc. can be much more powerful to connect with your audience.
Step 4: Set Up KPIs and Tools for Measurement
How will you know if your marketing is successful? Measurement!
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are benchmarks that will tell you whether or not your marketing efforts are getting you closer to your objective.
There are tons of tools out there that can help you measure your results, but the important thing is that you really understand what your analytics are telling you, and whether the numbers you see actually translate into value for your business.
Don’t get caught up in vanity metrics that don’t actually serve a purpose! For example, really, it’s not that important how many Facebook followers you have. Sure, it feels great to have fans, but with how Facebook (and most social media) works these days, it really serves no purpose.
Now that you’ve read this blog, you should have a good idea of how to create your marketing plan.
To help you take that next step, we’ve created a free Marketing Planning Template for you to help you put some structure around the thoughts swirling around in your head. You don’t need to spend days making a perfectly curated vision board or a detailed step-by-step plan. Instead, set aside an hour or so to put down what you already know deep down to be your biggest priorities and start building out from there.
Still feeling stuck? Contact us to learn more about how we help entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs achieve their goals!
Marielle Reussink
Founder of The Emms, Marketing Professional, Entrepreneur & Advisor to Start-ups