We got you.
We’ve selected the best marketing plans to help you write your own small business marketing plan that is rooted in details and produces accurate results.
What is a Business Marketing Plan?
Marketing plan for small business is a strategic guide that businesses use to set, execute, and track their marketing strategies over a specific period of time. Business marketing plans can include marketing strategies for different teams across your company, however, the important thing is that all of them work toward the same goals.
How to Write a Marketing Plan?
Writing a small business marketing plan requires including your business’s mission, KPIs for the mission, buyer personas, content strategies, your plan’s omissions, marketing budget, competition, and your responsibilities.
Stating your mission is one of the most important parts. You need to be specific but not too much. Remember, you will have plenty of space in the plan to explain how you will acquire new customers and achieve your mission.
Next, you need to determine your KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. KPIs are individual metrics that measure the elements of your marketing campaign and can help you establish short and long-term goals within your mission.
Each buyer persona should be a reflection of your customers. It is important that business leaders agree on what your buyer persona is.
Your content strategy should include types of content you will create, how much content you will create, the goals you will use to track each type, The channels on which you will share the content, and paid ads that will take place on the channels.
The marketing plan explains what your team is going to focus on. If there are other aspects that aren’t serving in this plan, include them in your plan’s omissions section.
Whether it is sponsorships, freelance fees or marketing hire, use these expenses to create a marketing budget and outline each cost in the marketing budget section of your plan.
Don’t forget to research the competitors in your niche and prole each one.
The final section is outlining your responsibilities. You don’t have to delve deep into your daily projects, but it should be known which teams are in charge of channels, content types, KPIs, etc.
3 Real Marketing Plan Examples to Inspire You
If you are ready to write your own business marketing plan, take some inspiration from the examples below.
1. Buffer’s Content Marketing Strategy
Writing a content plan is not easy, especially if you’ve never done it before. Did you know that only 55% of marketing teams have a content strategy? One of those teams is Buffer.
By analyzing countless content marketing strategies, Buffer created a small business marketing plan template regarding their content strategies. In the plan, they included examples and instructions for marketers who have never documented their strategies.
After reading their marketing plan template you will learn how to answer basic questions that will help you form a clear summary, set SMART goals, create accurate audience personas by analyzing real content strategists, solve your target group’s problems with your content, evaluate your current content strategies by analyzing the topics and themes of your worst pieces, do competitive research by comparing with your competitors, determine which types of content to craft, and develop an informational workflow.
Bugger’s content marketing template is a step-by-step guide with accurate examples for each section. If you are feeling overwhelmed by the idea of writing a marketing guide, this can definitely ease things for you.
2. Forbes’ Marketing Plan
Forbes published its business marketing plan template that has gathered almost four million views since 2013. Their template teaches you how to include 15 key elements in the plan which are:
- Executive Summary
- Unique Selling Proposition
- Target Customers
- Distribution Plan
- Pricing and Positioning Strategy
- Your Offers
- Promotions Strategy
- Marketing Materials
- Online Marketing Strategy
- Joint Ventures & Partnerships
- Conversation Strategy
- Strategy for Increasing Transaction Prices
- Referral Strategy
- Retention Strategy
- Financial Projections
If you don’t know where to start with your marketing plan, check Forbes’ marketing guide. It can help you define your audience, how to reach them, and ensure they become your loyal customers.
3. Contently’s Marketing Plan
Contently’s content marketing guide is amazing. Instead of applying a new strategy to each marketing campaign, they use the strategy of their previous campaign to drive the new one. Smart, right?
The company presented its content marketing plan in a blog post to help business owners and marketers develop productive marketing process. After reading their plan, you will learn how to:
- Align your business goals with your content objectives.
- Create detailed buyer personas using psychographics (you can forget about traditional demographics, they aren’t reliable).
- Create content for each stage of the funnel based on your customers’ needs.
- Determining the most effective marketing channels.
- Discover the topics your customers want to hear.
- Access your company’s need for resources.
By using their strategy as an example for your marketing plan, you could take away the burden of coming up with new strategies for each marketing campaign.
These three marketing plans serve as great resources to get your marketing plan started and deliver what your target audience needs. You will likely need to test some ideas, track their success, and refine your business goals as you go.