5 Essentials To A Successful Marketing Plan For Your Small Business

Every small business needs a marketing plan in order to grow and scale from one year to the next.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a road map to reaching your business goals through a strategic combination of marketing tactics.

While the goals you set will ultimately determine the success or failure of your efforts, it's important to choose the right strategies for getting there.

Choosing the wrong strategy can be just as damaging as choosing no strategy at all.

What does a marketing plan do?

A marketing plan acts as a blueprint for your company and can help you reach your goals faster.

With your marketing plan in hand, you’ll have an easier time persuading investors, hiring the right people, engaging your customers and more.

Check out these 5 essentials to making your marketing plan as successful as possible.

Identify your target market!

Knowing who you’re selling to is one of the first steps in creating an effective marketing campaign.

Before you can adequately capture the attention of potential clients and customers, you have to be able to identify who they are.

Knowing who your target market is will help you build better content and a more effective campaign.

The first step in knowing your target market is figuring out who it is you want to reach. Once you have that information, you need to determine who already does business with you. From there, you can analyze what kind of content those people want to consume.

Understanding your target market is the best way to attract customers to your business. This is a key part of creating a marketing plan that will allow you to reach your target market and grow your business.

Plan a social media marketing strategy!

Social media marketing is a game of numbers. You want eyes on your content and you want to get people talking about your brand. To do so, you need to create a strategy that takes into account multiple channels and promotes them effectively.

You can start by identifying the social networks that are most valuable to your business, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or another platform.

Next, develop a plan for each platform that includes goals, target audience and a content calendar to keep you on track.

Create an offline advertising strategy!

Offline advertising strategies are a must for any business, no matter the size.

The advantages of offline advertising include a high level of interaction, in-depth knowledge of the customer, and an excellent opportunity to build brand loyalty.

However, offline advertising can be costly and difficult to use.

When creating an offline advertising strategy you should consider which mediums work best for your product or service.

This will help you determine where to place your ads, how much it will cost, and what you can expect from the return on your investment.

Set up a content calendar!

A content calendar is a list of everything you’re going to publish during a certain time period.

It’s important to plan this in advance because it’ll help you and your team stay focused on what needs to be done, for example, writing posts every weekday or on a certain topic for the next month.

A calendar will help you arrange your content creation process in an easy way without forgetting any major task.

Create engaging content!

It’s easier said than done but creating engaging content is one of the proven methods of growing online.

To create engaging content, keep these 5 things in mind:

1. Be Interesting

2. Be Helpful

3. Be Authentic

4. Be Concise

5. Be Funny

Incorporate these 5 things into your content and you are sure to increase engagement with your brand and grow online.

If you’re looking for more marketing tips or need help creating an effective marketing plan, contact me at ScottCarterMarketing@gmail.com and I’d be happy to help!