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(Article first published in Jan '09. It has been modified slightly to suit its publication on our site)
For your business to survive you will need a strong marketing plan that outlines what activities you are going to implement and how much it's going to cost. Without a plan you will simply fall into traps of random spending on marketing and other activities that will not provide the return you want. A plan also helps to keep you focused on your goals and this in itself helps to focus your future activities.
However, marketing plans do not need to be huge tomes that take months to prepare and in fact they should be "living" documents that are updated regularly to cope with changes in your market. It is therefore better to create a simple, functional plan that is easily updated than one which is 150 pages long that you never want to touch again. So here are some guidelines:
1) Create A Plan To Meet Your Needs
Large organisations create marketing plans that are as thick as novels, but they are spending millions, so that's understandable. For the average business owner however, a one-page marketing plan is normally sufficient. If you want to you can split your plan into 4 pages, with each page representing a 3 month period. This allows you to take seasonality into account and build plans around specific festive periods or times of the year.
2) What Should The Plan Contain?
Your plan needs to contain 2 key elements. Firstly what activities are you going to engage in and secondly how much is each element going to cost?
To determine what activities to include, you need to understand that marketing is all about promoting your business, so that means that any promotional activity you participate in is marketing. So if you decide to create your own home-made leaflets...that's marketing. If you decide to write a printed or electronic newsletter once a month...that's marketing.
Therefore, when determining the cost, you need to factor in everything that went into creating that marketing element. For your homemade leaflet you will need to factor in your time, the cost of production (paper, toner, etc) and the cost of distribution (which for some may be more of your time). This part in particular is quite shocking to some people when they realise that the thing they created for "free" actually cost as much as, if not more than, having it professionally made.
3) How Much Spend Do I Allocate?
This is the area of most confusion to many people. Typical marketing spend for a business will range between 5% to 10% of expected revenue. So if your expected turnover for the year is €250,000, then you should build your plan around a spend of between €12,500 and €25,000. This may be an alien concept to many and these numbers may look shocking, but the reality is that marketing spend is an investment without which your business cannot hope to survive.
4) What Activities Are Best?
This is the part of my article where I simply cannot be specific. Every business is different and so your needs will differ. I can simply advise that you look carefully at the activities that you engaged in during the previous year/s and review the return. If you feel a particular activity worked for you, then run it again, if it didn't, then don't.
Additionally, think carefully about what activities will best help to create opportunities for you. Sometimes it goes beyond just pure advertising and leaflet drops and if you are a local business then think about all the possible activities that are going to get you noticed locally and this can include working with other local businesses, sponsoring a local team or engaging in PR activities.
In summary, your marketing plan is your roadmap for how you are going to ride out the next 6 to 12 months. Write it and embrace it, but remember it's not made of stone, so you can revise it to either increase or decrease your spend in certain areas as required.
Franco De Bonis has worked in the field of sales and marketing promotion since 1990 and was most recently the global marketing manager for a major international technology company before setting up DG Group in January 2007.
DG Group is dedicated to delivering all the marketing solutions any company may require. Whether it's a website or leaflets and brochures, or even some product packaging; DG Group will manage the whole project and even provide guidance along the way.
The content in this section is the original creation of DG Group and is protected by copyright. You may use this content on your site or in other materials providing you acknowledge DG Group as the author and include a link our site.
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