What if you wake up tomorrow to discover that your small business is no more? No business can outlive its sales.
This is why creating an online marketing plan for small businesses is essential for its growth and profitability.
Your business's ultimate goal should be to attract more customers like never before.
Some years ago when I had not learnt the secret of creating marketing plans for small businesses, I struggled to get clients.
Posting on social media and even advertising on television never worked because I had no strategy. I got so frustrated trying to grow my business that I was so convinced that quitting was the best option.
The business cost was accumulating, and the profit was not forthcoming.
Are you at the point where you are getting tired of your business already?
Have you decided that the competition is too high for you?
You are not alone. Thousands of small businesses are struggling with the same thing.
Unfortunately, a large number of these businesses shut down annually. Your case will be a bit different because I am about to unveil the secret that has worked for hundreds of businesses in this article.
This article will show you how to create a small business marketing plan for maximum profit.
What is a marketing plan, and why is it important?
Your marketing plan is the strategy you employ to sell your products and services. So why is a plan necessary?
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. It is impossible to hit the market and make good sales when you have zero strategies to make it happen.
Imagine you have a fashion boutique, and you don’t have a strategy to attract your target audience and compel them to make a purchase.
You will be in big trouble because and will be replaced easily, this is the same for other industries.
There's hardly any business operating as a monopoly now, at least not your business. Even monopolies adopt marketing strategies.
The ultimate reason why a marketing plan is compulsory is to drive sales. However, there are other benefits which include; keeping records of your marketing efforts, managing your resources, consistency and so on.
Do you want a marketing plan for your small business? Below are the 11 steps to create a marketing plan for a small business.
Determine your Niche
I know you are very excited about your business, but have you defined your niche? A niche is a specialized area of the broad market that your business can serve to differentiate you from the competition.
Many small businesses are offering all the products and services in their industry, and they see it as a way of making sure no money passes them.
But if you are an experienced business person, you will know that the jacks of all trades are the ones who lose the most money because people are searching for specialized experts.
Your business should focus on a specific area of a large market—geographic locations, cultures, age etc.
If you have already found your niche, that's great!
But, if you are yet to determine your niche, I will work you through it because it is one of the best marketing strategies used by companies.
Industry Overview
The first thing to do in order to determine your niche is to survey the industry. As much as finding a niche is essential, it is not something you should rush into.
Take your time to study the whole industry. Let's say you are a physical fitness coach. Survey the physical fitness industry.
Identify your interest
If you explore your business industry, there will be a specific niche you connect with; go for it! A friend of mine started a sewing business, and after a few months, she switched to bikini sewing.
My friend’s yardstick for choosing the niche was pure passion, and she is doing wonderfully because it is something she is interested in.
Consider your competition
The niche with smaller competition is something worth exploring especially if you are interested. Even if you are not an expert yet, learn and remember you can employ someone.
Unique selling Proposition
This is the icing on top of the cake. Your unique selling proposition (USP) is the edge you have over your competitors.
Remember that you want your target audience to buy from ONLY you and not from your competitors—those offering the same products as you.
It would help if you creatively make your business a better option than your competitors.
Many businesses have tapped into this secret. An example is Nerd fitness—their target audience includes people who identify as nerds.
Know your target audience
This is the second step in creating a marketing plan for small businesses. Your target audience is the people most likely to be interested in your product or service.
Beyond their interest, they have similar demographics and behavioral patterns that make them the best fit for your offers.
Your target audience is different from your target market. The market is broader.
Identifying your target audience will help you in
● Choosing the platforms or channels to use in your business
● Fixing your price
● Choosing the right partners
Remember that business is building a relationship with your customers. Hence, knowing who they are would help you reach them and make them loyal customers.
How do you find your target audience?
If you have successfully chosen your niche, then this is easier.
Imagine who your ideal client is and identify the following:
● Age
● Gender
● Location
● Socioeconomic status
● Interests
● Motivation
● Career
● Lifestyle
● Pain point—what keeps them awake at night?
Define your goals
Goal setting helps you and your team to know precisely what you are out to achieve.
Your marketing goals should not be too ambitious; if it is, you will lose out because everyone is going to be exhausted, and you won't still achieve the goal because your capacity can't get it.
On the other hand, when your goals are too small, everyone will relent because they don't need any effort to accomplish them. It makes you look like someone who is visionless. Therefore, your goals should be in between.
How should I set my marketing goal?
The SMART GOAL works at all times.
Your goal should be:
● SPECIFIC: What exactly do you want?
● Measurable: can we measure its progress?
● Attainable: Is it workable in relation to your current capacity?
● Relevant: Why are we setting this goal?
● Time-bound: What is the duration of this goal?
All of the above should be captured in your goal. I will give you three examples of wrongly set goals and rewrite them so you get a total grab of what I mean.
Examples of poorly defined goals
● We will get more engagements on our social media platforms
● We need to build our email list
● Rank number one on Google.
If you have any goal that looks like the above, cancel it immediately, as we will rewrite it now.
Examples of SMART goals
● We need to add pictures and videos to all our posts on Instagram and Facebook to get a 50% increase in engagement within one month so that we can get 100 new newsletter subscriptions.
● We need to create an ebook on the topic; how to market your business as a lead magnet which we will give out for 60 days in exchange for 200 email addresses for our email list.
● We want to rank 1 on Google with the keyword; small business marketing plan, in the next four months as we estimated it can give us 300 monthly web visitors.
What did you observe in this set of goals?
The first was not well defined.
Define your budget
Spell out your marketing budget. Your marketing budget is the specific amount of money your business is willing to invest in the marketing process.
Your marketing budget helps you align your marketing strategy and business goals and ascertain costs.
To get your budgeting right, below are certain things you should keep in mind;
Know your buyers' journey
Your buyers’ journey is the sum of all your customer experiences when interacting with your brand. You can identify your customers' journey by taking a walk in their shoes.
There are five stages of buyers' journey, and they include:
● Awareness: This is the touch point. How will your potential client get aware of your brand? Is it word of mouth, social media content, website, or ads?
● Consideration: Your potential client is trying to make up their mind at this stage. The reviews on your platforms, your customer service, and your brand play a pivotal role here.
● Purchase: In this stage, your customer finally purchased your product and services. This is not where it ends, so you must give your client an amazing experience so they move on to the next.
● Retention: At this stage, clients are returning for another purchase. Making it easy to contact you for support or other relevant information after a purchase enhances retention.
● Advocacy: This stage covers your customer's review. It can either be negative or positive.
Here’s an example; you run a digital marketing business that manages social media platforms for small businesses.
And here’s is an example of a customer’s journey;
Your ideal clients get aware of your brand through word of mouth. (Awareness)
She searches for your brand online to see if you are worth entrusting her social media handles. After going through my websites and social media, she sends us a message; she gets a prompt and friendly response. We give her an irresistible offer of freeing the first 25 days of social media management. She is excited, and she opts in. (Consideration)
After 25 days, she gets a notification that she needs to pay if she wants the service to continue; she pays for six months. (Purchase/ retention)
As you work with her social media account, you send her content about how to source content—taking pictures of products, sharing reviews, having good customer care, etc.
She commented on your page one afternoon after gaining an extra 1000 followers and increased sales by 35% since you started handling her social media platforms.
"This brand took my Instagram profile from the right image to the left image. They are simply the best." (Advocacy).
With the above, you will be able to budget your marketing plan. How much money will the touch point need to be established?
In this case, it is word of mouth, so you have to satisfy your clients and even promise a reward for telling their friends.
Do you get it now?
You will also estimate the amount of money each stage of the customer’s journey will need.
You must have more than one customer journey design; you can create about five, estimate how much they will cost, and work with their average.
Think about the assets that you can leverage
An asset is anything that brings you money. In creating your marketing plan, you must strategically leverage an already owned asset or build an asset you will leverage.
Excellent examples of assets many small businesses leverage are email list, partnership, events, products, content and so on.
For example, suppose this is your marketing goal.
“We need to create an eBook on how to create a small business that can create a good marketing plan as a lead magnet which we will give out for free for 60 days in exchange for 200 email addresses for our email list which we will use for our black Friday offers.”
And you have blog content, Youtube content, Facebook content, courses and more.
You can use the contents on your website to create the eBook. And utilize your social media platforms to gather an audience before considering ads.
This leverage helps to reduce your marketing cost because a good marketing strategy must be cost effective.
Pick the right channels
What marketing channels are you considering? Why are you considering Instagram ads to sell when your target audience is 70 years and above.
Hence be sure to choose the right channel. The right channel is where you find your target market.
Be Creative
This is very important in mapping out a marketing plan for a small business. Unleash your power of creativity.
The best way to do this is to ask yourself, in what way I can market my product differently.
You could have an idea anywhere, any time. Make sure to get a note. Don't be afraid to explore.
For example, a sanitary pad business started a girls' talk in high schools. The students had to subscribe to newsletters. They also had to pay monthly sanitary pads. The schools and the student’s parents agreed.
Imagine this organization gets access to ten high schools with a 250 population of girls in puberty. They will be selling 2500 sanitary pads monthly just from the schools.
Invest in Email Marketing
Email marketing is not dead, but you need to use a strategy that works. Invest in getting the email marketing software that suits your brand and purpose.
Employ an email marketer to work with your team or assign it to your marketing team.
Not having an email list as a small business means you are not building a connection with your clients. Remember that your social media can disappear at any time.
Start a Blog
Blogging is essential in the marketing plan for small businesses. Starting a blog is how to market your business on Google.
Google ranks business websites with a blog higher than those without a blog, and your goal is to leverage this algorithm to get clients for your business.
Starting a blog is relatively easy. All you need to do is answer the questions of your target audience. Taking keywords into consideration is necessary for growth.
Get Active on Social Media
Social media marketing must be included in the marketing plan for small businesses.
Social media marketing is the act of employing social media platforms to sell your products and services. The secret of social media marketing is sharing relevant content consistently and being responsive.
Apart from creating a business account across all social media handles, you should also have a personal account where you are equally active as some customers would want to connect with the brain behind the brand.
Make sure your team members are active on their account and, from time to time, promote the business.
To smash your marketing goals via social media, draft a content strategy and calendar. It accounts for consistency and purpose.
The social media platforms you should leverage:
● Facebook: This is the largest social media with over two billion users worldwide. Your audience is on Facebook, so you should do content marketing on Facebook.
● LinkedIn: This social media is focused on helping individuals and companies build a professional network. As a small business owner, you should have an active LinkedIn account to help you connect to potential clients.
● Instagram: This social media is a photo and video-sharing platform. This is a fast-growing social media that you should consider leveraging. Remember that geography and hashtags will help you attract your ideal clients.
● Twitter: This social media connects people and allows them to share their thoughts with a big audience. Being on Twitter helps you get information, and you have the opportunity to speak to a wide audience,
● Youtube: This is the second largest search engine, and your potential clients are searching for information. If you position your business as the solution to their questions, they will like and trust you.
There are many other social media you can share content on, but always learn to prioritize the social media that is most effective to reach your target audience.
Know who to hire
If you forget to hire skillful and hard working people for your business marketing, the marketing plan for small business is zero.
You know that you can’t possibly do the entire marketing task yourself so you should outsource. You need a team of visionary and skillful freelancers to manage your social media handles, ghostwrite your blogs and lead magnet, run and manage your ads, etc.
The best place to find these freelancers is on legiit.com. This freelancing website helps you get more work done as it provides you with top freelancing talents at your fingertips.
Hence, you don’t have to worry about the quality of jobs or about meeting deadlines as these freelancers have been vetted by the company.
Consider Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing involves partnering with online influencers to market their products and services.
When selecting an influencer for your brand, you should choose someone similar to your target audience.
Leverage existing customers
Many small businesses fail because they do not leverage their existing customers.
You need to stop running a one-time customer business. It is a way of wasting your marketing resources. Invest your time in nurturing your first-time customers to return and, in the long run, you will be able to build a loyal customer base.
Bear in mind that your customers will only return if their customer journey is a satisfactory one.
The best ways to leverage your existing clients are:
* Reach out to them on a regular
* Share valuable content that is related to your business
* Ask for feedback
*Ask for a referral, even if it means rewarding them
In conclusion, creating a marketing plan is the strategy pre-designed as a way of attracting your target audience to your brand with the sole aim of selling to them. It is essential as it gives your marketing efforts direction. The moment you get your marketing plan ready, you should go ahead to implement it. Find out what works better and do more of it.
The proven steps of creating a marketing plan for a small business are finding your niche, knowing your target audience, setting well defined goals, defining your budget, marketing channel selection, hiring skillful and dedicated people etc.
Hiring the right people will always be the main deal because at the end of the day we bet on people not strategy. Maximize this opportunity, legiit.com offers to help find the best people and get more stuff done.
Download