How to Build a Small Business Marketing Strategy and Plan That Works: Part 2
Once you have all your industry, audience, and competitive research, current marketing results, and goals and budget set for your 2025 marketing strategy, it’s time to put all that into action. If you missed part one where we talk about all that, head over there to get caught up.
A goal is great, but you have to figure out each tactic and step to accomplish those goals.
Your marketing plan is exactly that. A detailed list of each and every step along the way to success.
The Fun Part of Marketing Planning
Creative marketing can be so much fun especially for fun businesses like yours. To get your creative juices flowing, at some point between your goal-setting and weekly to-do list, you’ll want to have a brainstorming session. This is most fun with at least one other person, but the more the merrier. Use this opportunity to make a giant list of everything you could possibly do to market your business. This could be stuff on your website, social media content ideas, sales or holiday campaigns, media and influencers you want to connect with, events you want to attend or host. This is your opportunity to think BIG. Every idea is valid; document it all.
To get you started, we’ve made a big list of marketing ideas on our blog.
Narrow Your List of Small Business Marketing Tactics
Okay, we know you can’t accomplish all of those exciting tactics from your list. So now’s the time to narrow it down. There are a couple of ways to think about this.
First, we like to think about what went well last year. There is likely an opportunity to continue those items. And the reverse is also true. If you spent a lot of effort testing a tactic that just didn’t bear fruit, it’s time to cut that from your plan.
Second, map out the items based on a matrix of effort and impact, using four quadrants. Top left is high effort, low impact, top right is high effort, high impact, and so on and so forth. The people actually executing will have the best understanding of effort so be sure to communicate with your team before firmly placing tactics in each quadrant. You want to prioritize tactics that are low effort but high impact, and choose only a limited number of low impact high effort tactics.
What’s in Your Small Business Marketing Plan
The next step in converting your ideas into action is detailing the actions needed for each tactic you chose to add to your plan. This may sound mundane, but it will really help you understand how much work you and your team can accomplish in a given week or month. Some things take a sneakily long time and others can take a little long at the front but then almost no time later on due to automation.
You should also consider the talents of your team. For example, if someone is a better and faster writer, perhaps they manage the blog and email newsletter. While the person who is tech-savvy and creative should manage your TikTok and influencer relationships.
Chart out each step of each tactic in whatever tool works best for you. We love Trello, but it could be as simple as a spreadsheet. Put deadlines and assign team members to each part. This will help you stay on task when things get busy later on in the year.
At a minimum, your marketing plan should have some sort of calendar or timeline that shows major milestones for each tactic as well as regular check-ins. Some folks prefer a Gantt chart or even a paper calendar with each item written down (in pencil so you can adjust as you go).
You can also break out your big marketing strategy goals into smaller accomplishments marked on your calendar and track your progress throughout the year.
Your plan could include major collaborations, product launches, holidays big and small, a specific editorial calendar for each channel (social media platform, blog, media pitching, etc.), as well as advertising campaigns. It could include a messaging bank with key language, your brand voice and tone, a style guide, testing protocols, a historical recap and so much more.
For each tactic you are going to test, lay out what you want to learn and a timeline and budget for each iteration so you can be as efficient as possible with your time and money.
And of course, as you’re finalizing everything in the plan, it’s important to get buy-in from your team so they feel excited to tackle this with you and will come to the table with enthusiasm and creativity throughout the year.
Monitor and Adjust Your Marketing Plan Regularly
If only we could spend our time making a beautiful plan and then everything would go as expected. But unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way. You will have to revisit the plan often to ensure you’re on track, and both adjust what you’re doing and when.
Measure what you’ve done so far to see if it has met expectations and tweak it moving forward. You may decide to drop some tactics completely or add new ones, and all that is good and normal. You can even choose to have additional brainstorming sessions before important campaigns or seasons for your business. Maybe you’re doing this strategizing now, but you anticipate needing a refresh in the spring as you prep for patio season or summer activities.
What makes a good marketing plan is something that you’ll use, not just an exercise that gets filed away and never looked at again. The more often you revisit the plan, the less of an undertaking it will be. If you wipe your kitchen counters and high-touch surface areas daily, your big spring cleaning days are a little easier, right?
Okay, how are you feeling? We hope inspired and not overwhelmed, but if it’s the latter, just know that we’re here to help. We would love to help you build a marketing strategy and plan for next year that will help your business grow and serve its thriving community of fans.
We’ll leave you with a few good examples of marketing strategy documents. We didn’t create these, but we think they might spark some creativity for you.