Establish your marketing plan

Introduction

In this, the seventh of ten publications on business planning, I will discuss marketing and how to approach constructing a Marketing Plan.

I have lost count of the number of times I am told “I already have a web site and a business card”, thinking that is all there is to marketing. Well, the statistics show that the more business you need, the greater your marketing effort needs to be, even if you are an established company.

 Methods of Marketing

The methods available to us all are immense. With the growing use of social media by the business community, there is also a growing use of the internet to research products and services, suppliers and even customer comments. So let’s take a look at some of the methods available.

Flyers – good for small very local businesses as a method of introduction. For: cheap to produce in volume, can get the message out there quite quickly, do require a computer to be able to read. Against: a lot will be discarded, needs several repeat drops, expensive in terms of time/cost to deliver, produces around 1% of sales after repeat deliveries (that is 1% of all the unique drops made).

Web site – a must for the majority of businesses these days.  Your web site is useful source for research about your business products or services. For: can give wide coverage for your business, can be cheaply established, can be self-administered, can be updated and expanded cost effectively. Against: needs to be search engine optimised (normally requires specialist intervention), too easy to let the content become stale, needs other interventions to get traffic (potential customers) to the site.

Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in etc.) – the past 4 years has seen  massive increase in the use of social media by the business community. From tweets to blogs, from small to international brands, there are subjects within social media on a broad range of subjects, including Business Planning.

So what to do?

For me there is no one answer but I can say that social media can absorb a lot of business time to make it work effectively and that is its main problem. On the “for” side of the argument, social media can be viral in its impact, creating massive increases in business leads, 100 to 250% have been quoted publically.

Just one more thing, social media is not about selling, it’s more about establishing relationships by becoming a trusted contact. Visitors to your company facebook page (and web pages) will, in time, become potential leads and customers. It’s about creating reliable and valued content as well as establishing your businesses authority in  the subject matter in question.

E-mail Campaigns: - Use of e-mail to make potential customers aware of you and your company offerings. For – can be sent to a lot of companies very quickly, free apart from your time. Against – can be subject to spamming rules, difficult to get to the decision maker without purchasing a list of some description which can be costly, often filtered through internal fire walls.

Editorial (local and national newspapers, magazines etc.) – typically this will be supported through items of interest to local communities, business communities and interest groups. Typically through having run a series of adverts in that publication.

Local Radio: It is also possible to get publicity through local radio. Again, normally, items of interest to the local community. For – gets your name out there. Against – normally day time transmission so could miss your intended audience.

Other marketing activity

The few items mentioned above are just a few of the most commonly used. As you develop your business, you will need to increase your efforts and these are some of the activities you might like to consider using your web site or facebook: -

• Presentations

• Blog posts

• Reference guides

• Case studies

• Brochures

• Free trials, templates, guides and white papers

• Manuals

• Demonstrations

• Video casts

• Video of events, information

All of these need to be targeted at your customer groups and include content of interest to them.

The Marketing Plan

There are six things to consider before you commit to any marketing:

• How much money can be allocated for marketing (marketing budget)?

• How much time can you invest in marketing per day/week/month?

• What are my potential customers looking for?

• What methods will you use and how will they interact?

• What are the key messages I want to convey?

• How do I ensure consistency across all my efforts?

Having answered these questions, establish your strategy which will help ensure maximum impact across all of the media used. Then create the content for your communication.

Remember, keep your customer groups in mind, what is the service or product they are likely to be looking for and market your company as the one to provide for them and why.

The Marketing Plan Matrix is no more than a form of diary that details all of the actions that will be undertaken, when and by whom. The free template we offer has a few examples of activities you may consider as a thought provoker. If you want to learn more contact us via our website www.resultsresults.co.uk .

Graham Cripps

Results Consortium Ltd