Easy! A Great Marketing Plan for Your Small Business (or Blog)

Have you ever written out a marketing plan for your small business?

Marketing is an important part of any business, but the marketing of small businesses is even more crucial. With so many marketing channels available and no big marketing budget to speak of, it can be difficult for a small business owner to know where to start.

And if you don’t market your business, no-one will know that you exist.

In this article, you’ll learn the six components of a marketing plan and how they work together as well as examples from my own experience that illustrate the importance of each component.

Don’t rush creating your marketing plan. It is important because you need marketing to tell people what you sell or what you offer.

The Benefits of a Marketing Plan for Small Businesses

A marketing plant will grow your market share
Boost your revenue
Establish a customer base within that targeted market
Create a positive reputation for yourselves

The marketing plan is a roadmap for how the company will position itself in the marketplace. It starts with defining your objectives, which are what you want to achieve and why this marketing campaign matters.

Here are 4 of the main benefits of having a marketing plan for your small business or blog:

Clarify your goals and objectives: A marketing plan helps you define and prioritize your goals and objectives, making it easier to focus your efforts and resources.
Identify your target audience: A marketing plan helps you understand your target audience, their needs, preferences, and behavior, allowing you to tailor your messaging and campaigns to resonate with them.
Allocate your resources effectively: A marketing plan helps you determine how much to spend, where to allocate your resources, and which tactics to use to achieve your goals.
Measure your success and improve: A marketing plan provides a framework for tracking and analyzing your results, allowing you to learn from your successes and failures and continuously improve your marketing efforts.

1. The Purpose of Your Marketing Plan

Answer the question, “Why must I do marketing?”
The obvious answer would be, “To tell people about my business.’

However, as every business is different, every marketing plan’s purpose will be different too.

For example, marketing may be used to tell people about the new features of a product.

It may also help educate potential customers on how to use your products correctly and responsibly.

For small businesses, marketing is important for so many reasons:

building brand awareness
driving traffic online
increasing conversions from website visits into paying clients

2. Your Target Market

When you started your business, or while you were still in the planning phase of it, you most likely had an idea of who you were going to serve.

Did you have visions of these people streaming to you to grab what you have available?

The big question is, did you actually go out and TALK to this market?

Having dream clients and imagining what they want just isn’t going to cut it. The only way you can find out what people want, what is going to solve their problem, is if you talk to them.

The better way to start looking at your business and your marketing plan, is talking to these people first. You don’t want to spend thousands and thousands on building your business and then no-one wants your product.

Questions you need to answer for yourself so that you can include this in the marketing plan for your small business include:

Who is your ideal client?
What are their goals and needs?
How will you reach them with marketing messages that are relevant to them?
What marketing channels work best for this type of customer or prospect, based on what they need at the time (i.e., social media marketing)?
How often do they buy?
What features are they looking for?

This is a lesson that I personally learned in a small business I worked in for a while:

The owner of a small tour company put together a tour for people to travel to Egypt. It was for singles or couples or friends – and the age group he was looking at was 55 years and above.

I was very surprised when he told me that he had advertised in the newspaper.

But guess what? Within 10 days, the tour was completely fully booked!

Why?

Because he knew that his target market of older people still read the newspaper every day!

They weren’t hanging out on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms.

Two things to always bear in mind when you are creating your client avatar:

The buyer of your product is not always the end user (for example, a mom buying face wash for her preteen daughter).
Even if a company buys your product or service, you are still dealing with a person.

3. Highlight the Benefits of Your Product or Service

When you are promoting your business, you want to talk about the BENEFITS that your product offers.

This is very different from the features of the product.

The benefit is the NEED that the product fulfills in your customer. Put yourself in your ideal client’s shoes and ask yourself, “Why is the customer buying THIS product?”

Example:

A handheld pepper grinder’s features include stainless steel, a push button, a battery-powered motor.

The benefits are that it is easy to use if you do not have much hand or upper-arm strength, or if you need to grind pepper while stirring. It also gives you an air of sophistication at the dinner table.

4. Position your Business in the Marketplace

This is how you position the benefits of your product or service to your customers, who your customers are and how your competitors have positioned themselves.

To position your small business in the marketplace, you can follow these steps:

Identify your target customers: Define your ideal customer profile based on demographics, psychographics, and behavior.

Understand your customers’ needs: Conduct market research to understand your customers’ pain points, preferences, and purchase behavior.

Analyze your competitors: Identify your direct and indirect competitors, and analyze their strengths, weaknesses, and market position.

Develop a unique value proposition: Based on your understanding of your customers and competitors, develop a unique value proposition that differentiates your business and highlights your key benefits.

Communicate your value proposition: Develop messaging that clearly communicates your value proposition to your target customers through your marketing channels, such as your website, social media, advertising, and sales collateral.

Monitor and adapt: Continuously monitor your customers’ feedback and adjust your positioning and messaging as needed to stay relevant and competitive in the marketplace.

5. Your Marketing Tactics

Figure out how you are going to reach your target customers – based on your benefits and positioning.

What will the messaging be for every marketing tool, such as press releases, promotions, and advertising.

Social media is important for most businesses, if that is where your target market is.

How about the radio, podcasts, newspapers, adverts in magazines or on television? Will you hold a contest, hand out stickers, run a challenge? Giveaway free swag items?

6. Your Marketing Budget

We’ve all heard that saying, ‘It takes money to make money.’

It’s not very often that you can run marketing on a zero budget but if you don’t have money there are a couple of ways that you can get your first few clients for free if what you offer has value, and quite honestly, the easiest way at the moment is through Facebook Groups.

Once you have your first clients, the experts suggest you make your goal budget to 12 to 20% of your gross or projected revenue.

Some say don’t spend over $1,000 a month while you’re starting out.

Consider your marketing budget while you develop your avenues to market. Work within that budget. When sales are more consistent you can drop that percentage to even less than 10%, also based on the concept that it takes less work to keep a client than to find yourself a new one.

Benefits of a Marketing Plan

If you are serious about your business, or even about your blog or your side hustle, putting a marketing plan together is something you must do, for clarity and guidance.

here are some interesting points on why a marketing plan can benefit your small business:

Increased sales: A marketing plan can help you reach more potential customers, increase brand awareness, and ultimately drive more sales for your business.

Better understanding of your customers: Through market research and customer profiling, a marketing plan can help you gain a deeper understanding of your target customers’ needs, preferences, and behavior, allowing you to tailor your messaging and offerings to better meet their needs.

Cost-effective resource allocation: A marketing plan can help you allocate your marketing resources more effectively, identifying the most impactful channels and tactics for reaching your target customers within your budget.

Competitive advantage: A marketing plan can help you differentiate your business from competitors, establish a unique brand voice and identity, and position yourself as the go-to solution for your target customers’ needs.

Long-term growth: By setting clear goals, tracking metrics, and continuously refining your approach, a marketing plan can help you build a strong foundation for long-term growth and sustainability for your small business.