What is a small business marketing plan?

Small business marketing plan is something that needs accurate researching and planning before putting it into practice. Business needs perfect planning, organizing and marketing for getting good results. To market your business, you have to concentrate on budget and estimates too. Small business needs perfect marketing plan that suits both your budget and expectations of your business. Internet marketing plan is one of them, which can help in growing your online or offline business with affordable marketing strategies and plans.

What are marketing plans?

There are many kinds of marketing plans that helps in getting profit in short run, some of them are social marketing, article marketing, PPC advertising & marketing, blog commenting, website submission and many more. All these plans are together known as marketing plans because they market your business services via its own techniques and plus, they are successful tools which underline basic concept of marketing with latest techniques.

To hire a marketing agency for your small business marketing plan, you can simply surf online. Online marketing and SEO agencies are always ready to serve your business with latest marketing techniques and tools. Internet marketing plan is therefore the best plan available today for showcasing your business services.Small business internet marketing should be a part of your plan.

Pointers for Small Business Marketing Plan

You need a small business marketing plan if you are serious about being an Internet Marketer. You do not venture into a business without a good and well thought of plan. This plan would ensure that you know your objectives from the very start. This would also determine if you are on the right path. Here are some tips for you to adapt. Use the SMART method. SMART stands for S – Simple, M- measurable, A – Attainable, R – Relevant, and T – Time- bound.

Keep the Plan Simple

The simpler the plan, the more you can implement it. What is the use of a grandiose plan if you cannot do it because of its complexity? By providing a simple plan, step-by-step plan, you already started the process. But, before you plan, you have to do some market research about the demand of the market, how to supply that demand sufficiently without spending more than necessary, and how to market the product. So, you plan based primarily on three factors, the customers’ demand, the product, and the marketing procedure. You should also have short term and long term plans so you would know when you have achieved milestones. These will also determine if you are on the right path.

The results should be measurable

How can you know if you have succeeded in your short term and long term goals? You should set some milestones for this. If your goal is to earn $1000 within a month, then your milestone can be, “Having $1000 in your savings account.” If you have achieved this, then you will know that you are slowly fulfilling your goals. A small business marketing plan should have this important aspect.

Set goals that you could attain

Is it possible? Anything is possible to the determined mind, but there are limitations: you cannot include the goal: “After a month, I shall have sold 100 products to Martians.” This is an exaggeration just to give you an idea. That is why you have your short term goals, so you could do it gradually but surely. You can also do it the fastest way, if you are certain it is fail-safe.

Your business should be relevant to the present consumers

Do customers need the product? Can you market the product readily? Your business should be providing the services that the present consumers would prefer over the other brands or models. If you are marketing cell phones then, sell the latest model.

Set your goals within a certain duration of time

You should have a specific time limit. Be clear about what you want to achieve after 5, 10, and 15 years. There should always be an allotted specific duration for a certain goal. Your small business marketing plan must consider all these aspects. Plan wisely and you will succeed.

Vital Things to Remember for a Small Business Marketing Plan

There are vital things to remember when you initiate a small business marketing plan. Your plan inevitably revolves around certain major factors that you have to consider. Before embarking on your marketing plan, focus your mind on three major aspects and come up with a feasible program for successful marketing.

Product

You should consider several factors in your product. Prepare a detailed plan on the production, packaging, and the branding of your product. Research is always useful to determine what packaging attracts consumers the most. What brand could they associate easily and what amount of products they can consume. You can explore different packaging and branding, then stick to the most effective and develop it. Your product branding should not only be external but internal as well. This means if your branding slogan is “Jolly Hotdog, the choice hotdogs for healthy families.” Then you and your staff should buy the hotdogs for your families as well. You can never promote a product effectively if you do not use. You have also to consider your target area, are you responding to their needs?

Consumers

The consumers of your products are your priceless gems. Treat them with respect and sincerity. They are your bread and butter, so you should attend to them. Once they become your buyers, nurture them so they will keep coming back for your products. When they have questions, respond to them quickly and attentively. Ask them about the product you have sold. You can even conduct a survey on the reliability of your product. A small business marketing plan always make the consumers their vital concern. Remember, your target is to have long time, loyal customers.

Marketing strategy

Carefully plan your marketing strategy. You can never market effectively if you have not planned carefully the first two items in this list. You can market your product through newspaper ads, radio, TV ads but these are very expensive. Marketing online is the fastest, cheapest and the most effective marketing technique. You could do it through free Internet ads and links. Many small businesses prospered and had increased sales, when they used the Internet to market their products and services. Within seconds, you can reach millions of buyers all over the world. You can enlist your small business in various free submission search engine sites. Internet marketing using free methods or paid methods is one of the most reliable strategies to market your product. For online paid advertising, you can choose from Pay Per Click (PPC), or Cost Per Action (CPA.) The PPC is the most recommended because you only pay for actual visits to your site.

Preparing a small business marketing plan takes lots of research and common sense. You can do all of these suggestions if you have an open mind and an enterprising spirit.

Why You Need a Small Business Marketing Plan

You may have a misconception that just because your business is small you do not need a small business marketing plan. Well, you do. Whether your business is small or big, you still need a marketing plan to reap success. If you do not have any plan, then you are like a ship without a captain sailing aimlessly in the sea of millions of small businesses. Why do you need a business plan? Here are valid reasons:

It serves as a beacon light

You should include every detailed objective of the plan. This could serve as a beacon light to show if you are on the right track or not. Having a small business marketing plan is setting a solid foundation for eventual success.

It requires purposeful actions

All your actions will have a purpose. You do not do something for the sake of doing it. You do it because you have an objective in mind. You save time and when you save time, you save money as well.

It would help you market your product effectively

When you have a plan, you will know how much you can spend and proposed plans of marketing. This will help you select the method that coincides with your budget. There are many free methods to advertise like word by mouth, online advertising through web 2.0 applications (LinkedIn, Google Buzz, Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, Online forums, blogs, and websites). Use what is appropriate to cut cost. If needed, then opt for paid advertising.

You can use the results to improve your marketing plan

If you have a plan, you will know precisely the items you can improve on. It is an endless cycle of implementation, evaluation, and realigning of objectives. The needs of customers keep changing through the course of time, so you have to adjust to their needs if you want to survive in your business. Relevance of the product is very important so that consumers will buy them.

You can bench mark with other businesses

You can bench mark with other successful businesses and determine their best practices as applied to your own marketing plans. This is very useful in assessing competitors. It will give you some idea on what aspects you have to focus on. If you failed, you can rely on the comparison to work on your own. Adapting your own methods is still the best, but when you bench mark, you are using external standards to determine if your plans are at par with successful businesses.

Having a small business marketing plan is the proper way to do a business. It gives you a superb foundation for eventual fulfillment of your marketing objectives.

Steps in Establishing a Small Business Marketing Plan

It is your first time to establish a small business and you are at a loss on how to prepare a small business marketing plan. Don’t fret, almost everyone started small and inexperienced. But, this does not mean you cannot do it. The following are detailed steps on how to establish a business marketing plan.

Step 1 – Decide on a viable and feasible business

You can do this by conducting research about demographic profiles of customers or consumers: their age, sex, social status, economic level, education, and ethnicity. This would help a lot in making you decide the type of small business you want to offer. If you want to target certain products, then consider the profiles of the area, you want to sell your product to. Research what they need and provide what they need. This is a viable business for you.

Step 2 – Register your business and secure a business license

Depending on your location, you should register your business and secure permission to operate. Be certain you fulfill all the pertinent requirements provided by law in your own state or area. It is better to stay on the safe side.

Step 3 - Prepare your marketing plan

Once you have your product, prepare your marketing plan. Your small business marketing plan should include everything from product packaging, branding, advertising, selling and the budget plan. You have to allocate exactly how much you will spend on the different processes. You should define a clear Return of Investments (ROI) target.

Step 5 – Market your product

Advertising your product well will ensure the successful marketing of your product. The Internet is an easy, convenient, and quickest way to sell a product, so this should be your first priority. Using free marketing online tools will facilitate the process more.

Step 6 – Evaluate your plan

You should have set a certain period in your plan to evaluate the progress of your business. Are you increasing sales or not? Are you going somewhere? Is your business earning? You can now determine what you should improve on.

Step 7 – Modify plan based on results

With the results of your evaluation, you can now modify your marketing plan to make it perfect. However, perfection is relative; you have to keep modifying your plan to suit your consumers continuously.

Preparing a small business marketing plan is necessary if you want to succeed. Prepare it well and you will surely succeed.

Types of a Small Business Marketing Plan

A small business marketing plan will always have its pros and cons. In the business industry, nothing is perfect. The market keeps evolving and customers generally shift from one product to another until they find the product that they are most contented with. These are different ways to prepare a marketing plan.

The customer related model

Your marketing plan will revolve around the customer. The customer controls your plans. Many businesses employ this model because they believe that,”The customer is always right.” This is correct but you should also consider the cost of providing the best for your customer. The price of the product in this method is very unstable because you change the price according to the needs of your customer. This is not an ideal situation for new businesses because they can turn bankrupt after a few months.

The budget related model

You do not focus on the customers’ needs but on your available budget instead. So, if you have a low budget, then your products will be below par with other products. You decrease your price to attract more customers and in doing so, you are lowering its quality because you have to work within your income.

The benchmarking model

You get products from other successful companies and create similar products with some modifications. It may sell for sometime but when customers learn that you are a copycat, they will buy the original product instead.

The company’s preference model

You set a certain criteria without considering anything. You create your perfect product and sell it with the hope that once consumers use it and learn about its dynamic features, they will continue buying it. This is a brave and enterprising model. A small business marketing plan, making use of this model should have a solid, fall back; meaning the business owner must be willing to shell out cash without waiting for instant Return of investments (ROI.) Many enterprising businesspersons succeeded with this model. However, you should have enough capital to back you up. You should also have great determination to persist on your marketing plans.

If you do not have financial backing, the best small business marketing plan is one that combines all of the 4 models. This is because all factors are significantly involved in making a business successful or not. Few may succeed in each of the models, but it is not wise to gamble and place all your eggs in one basket.