46% of small business owners are unsure whether their marketing strategies work.
That’s a scary stat. Almost half of all small businesses don’t know if they are wasting valuable resources. And many of them are probably also afraid to stop spending because they don’t want to accidentally turn off something that is working.
To stop wasting money, we must develop a marketing plan that does three things:
- Gives guidance
- Sets goals
- Tracks progress
Small business owners can easily fall into the habit of trying something new or following trends to the detriment of their business. And while grabbing hold of the latest trend can be a home run, if it’s not within the guidelines of a well-thought-out marketing plan, it can lead to chaos. Even worse, it can damage your brand and business.
Why a Marketing Plan is Your Lifeline (Not Another Chore)
A thoughtful marketing plan can mean the difference between success and many hours of wasted time crafting social media posts, videos, or blog posts, standing around at networking events, or spending thousands of dollars on ineffective advertising. With a good marketing plan, you will:
- Develop a greater focus on priority marketing efforts.
- Improve productivity and efficiency.
- Shorten decision-making time.
- Get clear, measurable outcomes.
A marketing plan is a roadmap for your business. You wouldn’t travel across the country without firing up Waze or Apple Maps. You shouldn’t take another step in your business’s journey without a marketing plan.
Your Simple, Stress-Free Marketing Plan in 5 Steps
1. Know Your Customer
This one is the most glossed-over step by business owners I come across. They want to sell to everyone and anyone not realizing that it’s far more effective to speak clearly to a clear segment. Get to know your best customers; who they are, what they do, what they love and hate, and where they spend their time and money.
Ways to get to know your customers:
- Talk to them! Get curious about their lives. Speak to them in your store or randomly send an email asking about their experience. Communicate in post comments on social media.
- Analytics. Every platform from Google to Facebook and Instagram has analytics you can dive into to find more information about who engages with your business.
- Surveys. On-page surveys and surveys sent via email can provide great information. Keep it short and specific.
- Reviews. Positive and negative reviews can provide important insight into what people love (or hate) about your business.
2. Set Achievable Goals
Some marketing efforts take much more time and energy than we initially believe. It’s important to take into account all that needs to be done to accomplish an individual marketing task. For instance, building a social media following on one account rather than five will save you a lot time and heartache when you can’t keep up with all of them.
When you properly analyze your most effective marketing channel, you can set realistic, time-bound goals. Understanding which channel gives short-term results like advertising or email marketing, and which channel may take a longer, steady effort to deliver future, high-quality returns like SEO.
3. Pick Your Battles
Like I mentioned in step 2, focusing on one social media account is much more manageable than tackling five. There are many marketing channels you can utilize for your business. While we’d love to get into all of them, chances are that dominating just a few will get you better results.
How do you choose?
If you did step 1, then you know your customers, where they hang out, and what they are consuming. That’s where you start. You also want to do something you’re familiar with and comfortable doing. If you’re better at photos, maybe Instagram is the way to go. If you love doing instructional videos, create a YouTube strategy. Need to reach an older demographic? Maybe Facebook, NextDoor, or even direct mail is the right channel for you.
You can’t do everything. Even if you have the resources to engage in all channels, its not efficient to do it that way. Pick places where your customers are active and where you can get the most return for your investment.
4. Create a Marketing Calendar
There are many ways to do this but I’ve found that simpler is better and more likely to be followed. Here’s how we do it:
- Create a sub-calendar called “Marketing” in Outlook, iCal, or whatever you use.
- Develop a cadence of activity you can manage along with your other work.
- Plot in marketing activities such as blog posts, email campaigns, social posts, etc a few weeks into the future.
You can adjust your plan as you go if you find it easy or difficult to follow.
What I do not recommend is pre-scheduling too many posts to auto-post. Facebook/Instagram and apps like Hootsuite make it very easy to batch posts and schedule far into the future but often the feeling on the receiving end is cold and disconnected. Treat channels like social media as a social platform. Be social. Keep your calendar a high-level strategy that you implement daily so you can get a feeling for how customers are receiving your efforts and adapt to current events and feedback.
5. Track Your Progress
Establish “Key Performance Indicators” (KPIs) for each marketing activity.
If website traffic is your objective, establish a current baseline and a goal like “a 10% improvement in organic traffic within 60 days.” This objective may have leading KPIs like posting blog articles for SEO, creating social media posts, and creating an email campaign. The lagging KPIs would be social media clicks, Google search ranking, and ultimately website traffic. Even then, be sure to have a way to capture your audience information with Google Analytics, LinkedIn conversion tracking, and a Facebook pixel (among others.)
If you want more leads, creating a lead funnel that takes a cold audience to warm while increasing your quantity of leads is a multi-stage process. Plus, not all leads are good leads. You’d pay much more for a qualified lead instead of wasting your time chasing bad ones. Your KPIs could include:
- Number of leads
- Cost per lead
- Contact rate
- Close rate
- Lead value
For professional services like law and accounting, the value of a customer is typically very high, so you’d be more willing to pay more for a lead but you always want to optimize and lower that cost.
In e-commerce, we pay a lot of attention to advertising cost per sale. KPIs for our e-commerce clients typically are:
- Cost-per-click
- Return on ad spend
- Add-to-cart rate
- Conversion (sale) rate
- Average order value
- Return customer rate
No matter the industry you’re in, there are always a few KPIs that you should identify and track to monitor your marketing effectiveness. Don’t track too many. Pick simple priority numbers that can quickly indicate success or failure for each leg of the process from awareness to the sale.
Start With a Simple Marketing Plan and Grow From There
A good marketing plan doesn’t need to be extensive or exhaustive. For most small businesses, a simple one-page plan providing guidance and structure is enough. As with anything in business, do what improves the business. Do not create a massive plan that you’ll never follow. It only works if you can implement it.