You may think that marketing your business is easy, however, if you don’t think about and plan for it first, then you may find that all your efforts are for nothing. This means that it really pays to spend the time putting together a marketing plan which is going to help you to promote your business and drive you towards the success that you desire.

But where do you start? After all, it can be a little overwhelming to put together a marketing strategy that is going to catapult your business. So, with this in mind, I have put together the steps you are going to need to take in order to develop a marketing plan for your business.

Look at where your business is right now

Before you start thinking about a marketing strategy, you first need to think about where your business is currently at. You need to think about what you are selling and how you deliver that product or service. You also need to consider your main competitors and how they compare to you. Finally, you need to think about your SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) as this will give you a good starting point for your plans.

Consider your target audience

You simply cannot have a marketing plan for your business if you don’t know who you are targeting.  This means that you need to consider who is going to be buying your products or using your service. Once you know the key demographics such as age, gender, earnings, location and family type, you can tailor your marketing strategy to make sure that it is going to appeal to them and make you the most sales possible. Please don’t miss this step and do a catch all of everyone is our target audience.

Know your goals in your Marketing plan

The best way to succeed is to know where you want to go. During the planning stages of your marketing strategy, you should take the time to write down a short list of goals that you will find not only measurable but also reachable too. What does success look like for you is a key question to ask yourself.

Think tactics 

Once you have the bare bones set out for your marketing strategy, the time has come to think about how you are going to get where you want to be. This is one of the most important parts of the process and one that you need to give careful consideration to. The type of questions that you should be asking yourself is the approaches you are going to take; social media, email marketing or content marketing or whether you are going to combine them all for maximum impact. Also don’t forget offline marketing too such as networking, events or print – yes a combination is always best and doesn’t always have to rely on digital marketing.

Have a budget

Before you can go off and create magic with your marketing strategy, you are going to need to consider the price. After all, marketing doesn’t always come free. Whilst you may be focusing on social media or content marketing which are in essence free, you need to think about any added extras that you are going to need, as well as whether you are going to need to employ someone to work on your marketing too.

Once you have these in place, you have a marketing strategy. Not only this but you also have a tool that is going to be hugely beneficial to your business not only in the short term but in the long term too.

Interested in finding out more about how I can help. Take a look at my services:

Marketing Planning

Outsourced Marketing Management