The Marketing Plan: Intro For Small Business
This post focuses on the importance of a marketing strategy.
The marketing function in small businesses is typically handled by:
- An employee with an interest in, but no formal training with, professional marketing
- An individual who has some marketing background, such as in direct mail
- A small ad agency that does project work
For the small business that wishes to expand its marketing effectiveness, each of the above situations has some serious drawbacks. For example,
- An employee with no formal marketing training is too limited in all the marketing activities, skills, and disciplines that should be present.
- An employee familiar with and perhaps very effective with one or two marketing tactics tends to use these tactics to solve every problem.
- A small ad agency that does project work generally wants to do more work that fits within its niche, and may not be ideal for the entire needs of the business.
Importantly, in all the above scenarios, the business owner will probably not have exposure to strategic guidance and analytical skills.
Important First Steps
One of the first steps the business owner should take is to decide whether the marketing program requires periodic project work or a comprehensive, planned program. In our opinion, only a comprehensive program supported with strategic planning will serve the long-term needs of a growing enterprise.
A strategic marketing plan is focused on specific business objectives and contains the individual marketing elements that are required to achieve the objectives. These strategies include the creative strategy and media strategy. But there are many more less obvious strategies that should be addressed, such as positioning, public relations, and social media.
Marketing strategy may seem foreign and unnecessary to business owners at first. Frequently, the business owner and marketing professional have an unwritten mutual understanding of what is needed to move the business ahead, and this translates into projects. However, as they collaborate, the advantage of having a marketing strategy and plan becomes obvious, and at this point they engage in serious planning.
Small Business Core Idea: Invest time in developing your marketing strategy.
Mission: To help small and mid-size businesses capture the power of big-picture marketing.