You have discovered the secret formula to cure hair loss with guaranteed results. You start selling your product on your website and dreaming about the billions of dollars you are about to make.
Three weeks passed, and you haven’t sold any of the product. Why? Because you haven’t told a soul, don’t have social media for your product, and have no ads, no flyers, and no marketing at all.
No matter how good your product is, if nobody knows it, it doesn’t exist. Marketing is essential to create awareness, increase exposure, and help your target audience find the solution they have been waiting for.
As a small business, running multiple huge campaigns may seem out of reach. However, marketing remains a core component of business success. In this guide, we will discuss 6 steps to create a marketing plan for a small business like yours, with some affordable strategies.
Step 1: Define your Marketing Goals
Every action requires a goal and a reason. Before you jump straight into creating a marketing plan, you must establish your goals and objectives.
In order to create a well-defined goal, you should follow the SMART framework, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
An example of marketing goals with the SMART framework is “increase online sales by 25% within six months” or “acquire 1,000 new email subscribers in 2 months.”
These goals tick all the boxes of the SMART framework, unlike goals like “increase sales” or “let more people know my product”, which lack specific targets, timelines, and measurable outcomes. These vague goals offer no clear direction and make it impossible to track progress or determine success.
Step 2: Market Research and Analysis
Performing market research helps you avoid necessary detours and stay on the most efficient path to your goals. For example, you can start running your marketing campaigns and slowly discover who is interested in your product or service, but performing market research, such as doing surveys, can help you figure out who they are more efficiently and quickly.
To dive deep into understanding your target audience, you first have to create a buyer persona, which is who you think your potential customers are. Then, use surveys like SurveyMonkey or perform interviews to collect valuable data. Make sure you have sufficient data to know your target audience’s demographics, such as gender, sex, ethnicity, income, etc.
Competitor analysis is another useful market research you should perform. Studying how your competitors advertise and attract customers provides valuable insights that can help you create marketing strategies that suit your business.
Step 3: Create Your Marketing Budget
Once you have some ideas on how you want to market your product, how much are you willing to spend on marketing? You are not required to spend thousands of dollars or 10-12% of your revenue on marketing as standard, and perhaps it’s better not to if you are running ads for the first time. Starting small and testing your marketing strategies is a smart way to avoid wasting resources.
When creating your marketing tactics, effectiveness isn’t the only consideration; cost is also crucial. Fortunately, there are more affordable marketing strategies suitable for small businesses, such as social media marketing.
Step 4: Develop your marketing strategies and tactics
Finally, after doing some research and with a marketing budget, it’s time to create your marketing strategies and choose your marketing tactics. Your marketing strategy outlines the overall picture of how you’ll achieve your goals.
Marketing tactics are the specific activities that will bring your strategy to life. Each tactic should directly support your marketing goals while reaching your target audience effectively.
Examples:
Marketing strategy—Social media marketing
Marketing tactics—Consistent Content Schedule: Publish three pieces of engaging, product-focused organic content daily across TikTok and Instagram.
In other words, marketing strategy is your overall plan, and tactics are exactly what exactly you are going to do to achieve your marketing goals.
Step 5: Create an Implementation Timeline
Creating a timeline helps you track progress and stick to your plan. Your implementation timeline should organize all marketing activities into a manageable schedule, they may include a monthly, weekly, and daily schedule.
Example of an implementation timeline:
Daily
- Three posts per platform (mix of photos, videos, stories)
- Community Engagement (responding to comments, DMs, and interacting with other accounts) for 30 minutes
Weekly
- Content Calendar Planning (Plan content for the upcoming week) every Monday
- Performance Analysis (Review key metrics: followers, engagement, reach, website traffic) every Sunday
Monthly
- Content Theme Review (Evaluate monthly themes and plan for the next month)
- Influencer Outreach (Contact potential influencers for collaborations)
Step 6: Evaluate and Refine
Evaluating and monitoring your results is necessary for measuring the effectiveness of your marketing strategy and tactics. If you don’t track the metrics, you won’t understand what is working and what isn’t.
A comprehensive monitoring system helps you understand the best-performing tactic so you can allocate your resources for maximum impact or when it’s time to try something else.
Conclusion
As you can see, creating a marketing plan isn’t as difficult as you might think. By following these steps, you will be able to develop a solid marketing plan for your small business. Remember that the marketing landscape is constantly shifting, your marketing plan should evolve as you learn and grow.
Want to start your own online business but don’t know where to begin? Check out our free guide on “How to Start An Online Business”. This guide gives you a step-by-step roadmap, guiding you from brainstorming ideas to choosing the right business model, all the way to launching your business.
Subscribe to my newsletter and grab yours today.
Selling online has never been easier. Launch your business in minutes for $1 with Shopify today!
Pingback: 8 Effective Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses