How To Write a Winning Small Business Marketing Plan - Part I

The small business world is changing rapidly. While mergers and acquisitions have made your big competitors huge, the internet has leveled the playing field for everyone. The days are long gone where you can swing your doors open and customers will beat a path to your doors.

So how do you not only survive but also prosper in 2009 and beyond?  By developing an effective marketing plan and implementing it aggressively.  Now is not the time to pull back on your marketing efforts but to double down and develop the smartest and most aggressive marketing plan in your industry. Smart marketing is what drives a successful business. During a recession, it will mean the difference between going out of business or thriving and being a super success. Your best business years could be during this recession!

This article is going to be in two parts because it was not possible to fit the information into one and stay within the editorial limits.  You will be able to define your market and competition after reading this article, which is the most important part of an effective plan.  The second article will discuss in detail how to develop the remaining components once you have defined your market. 

First, it is a system.  Systems allow you to develop something once and then put it on autopilot.  You can implement a system today and know what the results will be tomorrow. Effective marketing systems allow you to leverage the assets you already have.   These assets can be the knowledge you already have but are not utilizing effectively because you do not know how.  It might also be allocating your marketing budget to a more effective medium.  This will all become clear as you develop your marketing plan.  

An effective plan will provide the answers to:

• Who your best customer is or will be
• What your customer really wants (not Needs)
• What your marketing message will say to them
• How you stay in contact with them after they buy
• What your sales and marketing goals are

Once you have developed these components then you can determine how you will communicate to them (medium) and how much will you spend to reach them (budget). Putting these techniques to work in your business will put you years ahead of your competitors. Why? Because very few small business owners know about the concepts that we are going to discuss or take the time to implement. These techniques can literally double your business over the next six months if you apply them to your business.  However, you must take action and do the work!  The best ideas in the world are useless without action.

If you already have a marketing plan, you night need to edit it in its entirety. As you study the concepts, think about how each one can be used in your business. Throw away your ego and think about how you can adjust or tweak each one to fit your business model.

In my consulting experiences, I have noticed that most small business owners are better at “doing the work” then “planning what to do”   While getting things done or doing the work is what made them successful in the first place, doing the wrong things can lead to additional trouble or undesirable results. You need to understand your market and what it wants to buy before you try to sell it anything.

Writing an effective marketing plan doesn’t have to take a lot of time or require writing a book sized document. You can write a great marketing plan over a weekend or even in a day. You do not need to worry about proper grammar, formatting or style. Just get a pen, paper, and start.  A word of advice here would be to set aside uninterrupted time to develop your marketing plan. It could be the most important document you refer to over the life of your business.  

An Effective Marketing Plan Has Eight (8) omponents.

1. Understanding Your Market
2. Understanding your Competition
3. Understanding Your Customer
4. Picking A Niche
5. Writing Your Marketing Message
6. Oicking Your Medium
7. Setting Your Marketing Goals
8. Developing Your Marketing Budget

So, let us get started with the first part in an assignment for you:

A big mistake many small business owners have is falling in love with their product or service without thinking much about whether or not the market actually wants it.  If you try to sell something the market does not want, they will not buy it- period.  This is not the same as what your customer may need - they must want it.

To get an understanding of what your market wants (not what it needs) ask yourself the following questions:

• Are there niches or segments in my market that are being underserved?
• Is this market big enough to make a profit?
• How much competition is there in this segment?
• What weaknesses in the competitive offerings can I capitalize on?
• Does the market want my unique offering?
• How much share of the market do I need to breakeven? Make a profit?

You need to honestly ask these questions of your market and correctly interpret the answers.  A market that does not have any competition may be worse than one with a lot of competition.   Other entrepreneurs may have decided that the market was not profitable. You will need to determine if they were wrong or that your idea is too new and uniqueto have competitors.

In the next article, we will develop the rest of your marketing plan...   Does the market lend itself to a narrowly defined niche?  How will you target them, develop your message and reach them?

So get started and good luck!   I will be back with part II of this article next Wednesday, 11/12.