Don't Be Intimidated by Putting Together a Marketing Plan (Follow This Outline)

I was recently speaking with a friend who has been running a success small business for a while but she is ready to take her revenue to the next level through increased marketing efforts. Maybe her story sounds a lot like yours.  You’ve been in business for a while but it seems like there is a bigger piece of the pie out there waiting to be taken. The advice I gave to my friend, that I now want to share with you, is simple: break down your marketing to-do’s into phases. Here is an example of phases for a business that will focus heavily on content, social and email marketing for their customer retention and acquisition strategy. This outline won’t work for every business, but it should help you conceptualize what you need to do for your own business in simplistic terms.  

The Four Phases of Ramping Up Your Marketing

Phase 0: Prep Work

 

During this phase you need to nail down the basics of your marketing

• Come up with two or three promotions you’d like to offer your customers that will really grab their attention
• Nail down the details for your target demographic (age, gender, location, etc.). You’ll need this info for your ad campaigns
• Define your goals (what do you need your campaigns to do in order to be successful)

Phase 1: Setup    During this phase you need to get everything prepared for the actual launch of your new marketing campaigns:

• Develop a blog that is branded and part of your main site
• Setup a Google Analytics account
• Select an email marketing platform
• Design an email template or two
• Put together your first email campaign
• Start a Facebook Page, Twitter account, Instagram profile, etc.
• Fill out your social media profiles and seed them with initial content
• Put together an editorial calendar for your blog
• Put together a social media calendar
• Sign up for Google Adwords, Facebook Advertising, etc. accounts if you’ll be running ads
• Create your initial ad campaigns (including landing pages) – if you’ve never done this before, it is best to hire a marketing agency to help so you do not waste money through trial and error
• Put together (at minimum) a 3-month promotional calendar and know what collateral you will need by when to ensure each promo goes out without a hitch
• Test your website, landing pages and all aspects of your campaign to ensure usability is top-notch

Phase 2: Launch

Now the fun begins – it’s time to launch your new marketing campaigns! It’s really important to remember at this time that what you present on day 1 is not a finished project. Your marketing campaigns will evolve as actual customers begin engaging with your brand. Nothing is set in stone – and if you’re not 100% happy with the way each pixel is on each online ad that is okay. It’s still a good idea to launch and iterate as you go so you can make money and learn at the same time.

• Start asking people to opt-in to your emails
• Begin posting to your social media pages based on your social media calendar
• Take your first blog post live
• Launch your online advertising campaigns
• Start collecting customer feedback
• Keep a close eye on your Google Analytics account

Phase 3: Maintenance and Optimization

One your  initial marketing campaigns are launched – you’re officially ramped up. Congrats! Now the real work begins: maintenance and optimization of your online brand and marketing campaigns. During this phase you will need to:

• Optimize your advertising campaigns
• Optimize your social media posts
• Optimize your email campaigns
• Spend a good amount of time in Google Analytics getting an understanding of your online visitors and their behavior (and how that behavior relates to your business goals)
• Make assumptions based on the data you see and then a/b test new ideas based on those assumptions
• Continue following your social media and blog posting schedule (mostly to a tee)
• Engage with your social media audience in an authentic manner

This Outline Is Good But It’s Not Enough

It’s true. This outline includes the very basic things you must do to ramp up your marketing efforts. There is so much more that is involved that we didn’t cover here. The goal of this post wasn’t to be your one stop shop for the secret plan to launching a marketing plan that leads to giant overnight success. I don’t think there IS a secret formula for that, really. (Even the very best viral marketing campaigns have been well thought-out in advance. They just LOOK like they were thrown together. That’s done on purpose. Really!) The goal of this post and the above outline is to get you thinking in the right direction. To make the process of ramping up your marketing feel less intimidating. I hope that it has achieved that goal. If it hasn’t please leave us a comment below with what you think is missing and we may add the answer to this post!]]>