Small Business Marketing Plan — Breaking the Rules and Thriving

The problem is…

A small business marketing plan can be very different from a marketing plan for a larger business.

Yet schools generally short-change the process of marketing for smaller businesses by shuffling all the big-marketing tools that have little relevance. Or they portray small business marketing as boring, when the opposite can be true.

From our extensive real-world experience developing and (most importantly) implementing an effective small business marketing plan for literally hundreds of businesses of all type, we’ve discovered subtle and not-so-subtle differences between small and larger-business marketing.

One thing we’ve learned that they forgot to tell you in school is that developing and implementing an effective small business marketing plan can be great fun – especially compared to your having to work for a larger company where you may have little control, and where you may not share in the success.

Your Small Business Marketing Plan — Should You Take Risks?

Because smaller businesses have less money and fewer resources, Continue reading →

Small Business Marketing Plans –
Why So Many Suck!

Okay. So you spent all this time filling in a boiler plate Marketing Plan, and answering all their questions. But then you start to wonder, how come so many people who fill in these boiler plate marketing plans still end up with a business that struggles or worse, that fails?

Does your own Marketing Plan suck?

Over the years experts like me and major venture capitalists (I have helped several) have seen a steady flow of theoretical mumbo-jumbo-filled Marketing Plan programs delivered by academics and theoreticians who have little real-world experience.

These are the very people who gave Fred Smith a barely passing grade for his plan to launch FedEx (he ignored his teacher and went on to create one of the nation’s greatest success stories), while enabling others with unrealistic fundamentals.

But there’s a much easier and more reliable way to create a truly effective Marketing Plan for your business, regardless of its size and type, without spending a fortune on useless theory.

Marketing Plans for Small Business Marketing are essential for predictable and escalated growth.

The problem is…

Most small business marketing is put together in pieces, without a coordinated strategy. In this way the typical business owner gains a fraction of the customers and profits they could be getting from an effective marketing plan.

What Do Great Marketing Plans Provide?

If you have a product, service or business, spending time to develop a Small Business Marketing Plan will help you lay out all the strategies and tactics you’ll need for: getting your message in front of the right people,

• closing more sales, and
• bringing people back to buy more from you.

The Marketing Plan is your roadmap for success. It gets you thinking through all the opportunities and possible problems, before spending money on useless or harmful tactics.

For small and large businesses alike, marketing plans provide the outline you want for growing your business without losing your shirt on ineffective programs and media. And spending time creating that Marketing Plan gets you to address crucial questions you may not have otherwise considered, such as: Continue reading →

Situation Analysis for Marketing Plans that You Develop – Your First Strategic Step

Creating a situation analysis for the marketing plans you are developing means understanding your product, customer base, and everything else that could impact your marketing effectiveness.

Here’s the problem…

Most people charge into marketing their business by making assumptions that may not be grounded in reality. Without properly conducting a situation analysis for the marketing plans we are working on, our natural bias tends to blind us from much of what’s really going on. Without an objective review of all aspects of our current situation, we will likely miss opportunities and problems that are positioned to impact us.

And if you don’t fully and correctly understand where you are, how will you create an effective plan for how to get where you want to go?

The solution is simple. Continue reading →

Sales and Marketing Plans –
What They Are and How They Work

When personal selling is a large part of how you get business, your sales and marketing plans will break the selling process into manageable parts. It will then define specific marketing strategies, tools and efforts that will boost the performance of your selling.

Personal selling refers to face-to-face, telephone and electronic selling (web conferences, etc) and selling to groups.

The problem is…

Too many businesspeople don’t coordinate all their marketing elements to support the selling process, and therefore limit their potential revenue generation.

But effective sales and marketing plans solve this by Continue reading →

Why Strategic Marketing Plans Can Be So Valuable

Here’s the problem…

It’s human nature. Rather than creating strategic marketing plans, most people simply select one or two tactics thinking that’s all they need.

By doing that they attract just a trickling of customers.

Most people don’t realize that strategic marketing plans can help provide a framework for bringing in mountains of those clients that are relatively easy to capture.
Continue reading →