How to Create a Simple Marketing Plan

Struggling to create a simple marketing plan that gets results?

Developing a marketing strategy for your small business can be extremely daunting, especially in our age of total media saturation. It can be easy for you to look around and assume that advertising is a multi-million dollar game that requires an extreme amount of money to avoid a viral marketing flop.

The pressure of developing a successful marketing plan can be even worse when you’re pressed with time constraints: local competition is getting worse, large businesses are moving in on your target group, etc. The key is planning for your marketing strategy to fail. That way you’ll be prepared to make the necessary adjustments to get it right back on track.

Target Your Audience

When sitting down to create a simple marketing plan, it’s obviously important to think about who you’re targeting. For instance, if you’re a condiment company, it probably won’t exactly pan out very well for you to focus on the punk-rock demographic or the organic/green crowd.

Pushing a well-targeted campaign properly can take a lot of time and research to implement properly. However, it’s a lot less time consuming than completely redirecting your efforts because you failed to target your efforts in the first place.

Build a Buzz

With widespread Facebook groups, Craigslist postings, cult-like blog postings and even incredibly dedicated Internet comic fans, targeting has become easier than ever. All you need to do, in a paradoxical way, is target with a shotgun-like method. By focusing on just a couple of social media sites, you can begin to generate online buzz and capture one of the more important marketing tools: word of mouth.

Get Some Variety in Your Life

Social media alone will not catapult you into superstar status, but all isn’t lost. Mix up your marketing strategy with networking and other local marketing tactics and you’ll have customers beating down your door in no time.

What’s the word: So there you have it, three steps on how to create a simple marketing plan. By targeting the right audience, building a community of loyal fans and implementing a diverse marketing strategy, you’ll be well on your way to attracting your dream clients.