Marketing 101: What You Need to Know About Creating a Good Marketing Plan

Start a business and everyone will beat a path to your door, right? Wrong. You may get some decent word-of-mouth business, but that can only take you so far. If your customers don’t even know your door exists, how can they beat a path to it? This is where a good marketing plan comes into play. A good marketing plan will separate the successful companies from the failures, so read on if you don’t want the latter.

You need a starting point, you need a clear vision and mission statement. Besides the obvious reason to make a profit, why are you in the business you are in? A good mission statement will give your business your personality and enthusiasm, and the energy and commitment you put into you and your business is the first step of marketing. Once you see your business’s personality and purpose, you can imagine where it will be in 10 years, how many employees you’ll have, what kind of customers you serve, how they find you, who your competition is, and how you’re different. Your business may change at some point, so then your vision must also evolve.

Since you’re reading about marketing, I’ll already assume you have your product and service offerings in order. What you need to know is who your customers are because you can’t market to what you don’t know. It can’t be everyone so narrow it down. This will take some research, imagination, and possibly some trial and error. Think of whom you like to work with and who needs your products and services the most, and you’ll probably find yourself serving customers who will help you grow.

Marketing can be a full-time job, but for some hiring a marketing expert can be too costly. If you have the money, consider hiring a professional marketing person, and assuming they’re good (obviously you’ll hold them accountable), they’ll more than pay for themselves. Here’s what is involved (in a nutshell). First you’ll need to have a budget for marketing expenses. Generally, a good average number is at least 10% of your revenue. Now that you know how much you can spend, you’ll need to write your marketing plan down on paper. Stick with it.

Stay consistent with your marketing efforts. Too many companies don’t put enough resources, time, and money into their marketing efforts. With inconsistent marketing, when your busy period dwindles down, you’ll have no new business or leads to increase sales. Now you’re stuck with down time to do more marketing, and will have to wait for responses. This cycle will surely break your company eventually.

Try multiple marketing avenues. In addition to direct mailings, you can also write newsletters or articles to provide publicity, speak at industry events, go to tradeshows, or even volunteer your time on behalf of your company to increase exposure and networking.

Lastly, with all this good marketing working for you company, you must monitor all the results. This is extremely important because without monitoring results, you could be wasting time, money, and resources in a marketing campaign that is not working. Remember, just because you are marketing consistently, doesn’t mean that every avenue you pursue will pay off. Feel free to ask customers how they heard of you, put promotion codes on direct mailings, put a feedback survey on your website, ask questions to trusted clients, or analyze your sales. Happy marketing.