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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Develop Your Small Business Marketing Plan

Market Street
Market Street (Photo credit: glennharper)

Develop Your Small Business Marketing Plan ~ http://www.lpcmarketing.com/

Times are difficult.  Competition is fierce.  Your business needs each benefit a local business advertising and marketing calendar can provide it to survive and succeed.

1. Concentration and Discipline

A small business marketing plan is the spirit of your whole business strategy.  A weekly checklist of activities will keep you on track to beat the competition.  Understand that many of your competitors are flying by the seat of their pants, as you might be doing at this time.

Investigate your competitors.  Look at their mainstream media buys and online resources.  Determine if they are sending out direct mail.  You need to be eating their lunch, not having them devour yours.

An effective marketing plan will surely boost your sales and increase your profit margins. You should be able to convince customers that you have the finest product or service for them at the best possible price.

2. Marketing Plan

For small businesses, a marketing plan should cover one year. For small companies, this is often the best way to think about marketing. Things change, workers leave, markets evolve, customers come and go.

Many business owners blur the lines between branding, promotion, advertising, and public relations. Those are the media channels of a message or campaign, not the marketing itself.

Once you have mapped out an annual plan, you can choose to take the actions yourself, or contract out your continuing marketing to a professional.  For most businesses, an outside contractor is more effective than an in-house employee.

3. Comprehending Your Market

Numerous advantages can be extracted from the marketplace if you know how. The small business marketing plan is an excellent tool for identifying and developing techniques for taking advantage of these advantages.

4. Tracking

Even experienced marketing professionals have difficulty tracking which media, advertising, and promotional buys result in profits.  Tracking is a pain, but necessary.  You will want to shed those activities that don't add to the bottom line.

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." John Wanamaker ~ http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/1992.html

5. Accountability

A good marketing plan holds everyone accountable.  Now that you have an understanding of market circumstances, you can flesh out your plan. This plan does not have to be a formal document, but should at a minimum consist of a written outline to communicate with staff or outside consultants.

 Accountability is required at all levels - whether inside your company or outside.

A good quality marketing and advertising calendar is more than a easy step-by-step of digitally and offline campaign.  Marketing and advertising is part art, and part science.

Come to LPC Marketing to learn more about a small business marketing plan, as well as using reputation marketing to boost your SERPs and prevent having to deal with reputation management.

http://lpcmarketing.com/

Tags:  small business marketing plan,marketing plan for small business,small business marketing plan template

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