Without a marketing plan, your business will meander along the ‘hit and miss’ path. For you will tend to set no specific goals, and therefore not really progress. Your budget, time and other resources allocation will be either non-existent or haphazard at best. And generally you will intentionally or not let things slide.
But all you need to get started is three minutes. Not much, really now, is it?
Sure, a big international player such as Cadbury Schweppes may have a marketing plan that runs to 100 pages. However, your first marketing plan need not be more than one single sheet of A4.
Here are the key steps to getting your marketing action plan moving:
To get published in the local media.
To get more repeat customers.
To attract new women customers within the age group 30-45.
Your goal here is to make sure your marketing goal is a ‘doable’ one. Do not set yourself up for a fall at this stage. Think small, work towards big…
By the end of next week I will have achieved…………………………….
To do this I will spend ………. hours on marketing activities.
These activities will include…………………………………………………….
Within one month, I will have completed/acquired………………………
The days and hours I will dedicate to marketing each week will be..
……………………………………………………………………………………………..
Taking your first mini-marketing plan as an example, you can now go on to develop several for each marketing or business goal. Start right now: one for ‘creating a monthly ezine’, one for ‘referral or word-of-mouth marketing’ and one for ‘developing free samples of your services’. These are just examples; you are, of course, free to choose your own!
Obviously, the above mini-marketing plan assumes that you have already worked out who your target audiences are, as well as your positioning statement, USP and so on. If you need any help in these areas, then there are a myriad of both free and inexpensive tools to guide you.