A small business marketing plan that will get you results

A marketing plan could help you reach more customers and promote your products or services. Step one is to create a marketing plan and step two is to put this plan into action with a go-to market strategy – this guide will help you do both.

Read our guide to writing a marketing plan for your business and download a free marketing plan template to get you started. We’ll cover:

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a document that lets you establish and track your marketing strategy (or strategies) over a period of time.

Let’s say you want to launch a new product or service. While some businesses might develop these first and then consider marketing as an afterthought, a marketing plan helps you make marketing part of the entire process – and make smarter decisions along the way.

Your marketing plan could cover the overarching marketing strategy for your business, or you might have individual marketing plans outlining different strategies for different goals.

Marketing plan template

Download your free, editable marketing plan template to create your own marketing plan.

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How to write a marketing plan – step-by-step

Follow these marketing plan steps to turn your ideas into action – and start growing your business.

1. Work out your goal(s)

It doesn’t matter whether you call it your mission, your goal or your objective. You should define what you want to achieve before planning how to get there.

You can do this by developing your marketing goals based on your overall business objectives.

The best way to approach this is to have SMART goals – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This makes sure you know where you’re going and, importantly, when you’ve achieved your aims.

Once you have your goals, you can work backwards to create more manageable steps and small goals to reach your main goal.

Business example: You run a vegan café and want more people to try vegan dishes. Your marketing goal would be to increase footfall to your café – which should have an impact on your sales. From there, you can come up with specific numbers that you can measure over time.

2. Who are you targeting?

Some people won’t be interested in your product or service, despite all the money and time you spend trying to attract them. That makes targeting the right audience essential – and a key question to answer in your marketing plan.

You should think along the lines of age, gender, location, how much money they earn and any other demographics you think could be important.

Business example: You know that younger people may be more likely to go vegan, so build a customer persona around someone who’s grown up eating meat but is becoming more interested in vegetarianism and veganism. Where does that person live? What would attract them to your café?

This can get psychological as you work out what marketing and messaging your target audience will respond to.

3. Research and analyse

You’re not working in a vacuum. You have competitors – they may be bigger or have more experience in the market, so you should detail what they’re currently doing with their marketing.

This will help you identify winning strategies that you might be able to replicate. But it’ll also help you understand the differences between your competitor’s marketing mission and what you hope to achieve – helping to plug the gap between the two businesses.

Read more: How to do competitor analysis

To help you gather your research, you could try:

customer surveys
interviews
focus groups
pricing analysis

Our guide to pricing a product has more information on setting the right price to make money.

4. Explain your strategy

You also need to explain the strategies and initiatives you’re going to use to reach your goals. Note down what makes your business stand out from your competitors – these are your unique selling points (USPs).

Have a think about which marketing channels best suit your aims. Here are some examples of different marketing channels:

your website
social media
email marketing
content marketing (think brand content, blogs and search engine optimisation, or SEO for short, and videos)
word-of-mouth marketing
pay-per-click (PPC for short)
print advertising
billboard advertising

Marketing channels to promote your business

As part of your marketing planning process, you should think about the messaging you’re putting across through your marketing channels to attract customers. What problems are you solving for your target audience? What’s different about your product or service? And how do existing customers rate you?

Our ultimate guide to marketing your business includes everything you need to know about advertising and channels you can use to promote your business.

5. Measuring performance

You won’t know if your strategy’s working if you’re not measuring performance. This goes back to the numbers mentioned in point one.

Lots of businesses use key performance indicators – or KPIs – to measure the effectiveness of their marketing. You might also hear these called ‘metrics’.

It sounds like jargon, but they’re useful when tracking how you’re doing over time. Some KPIs you could set include:

growth in sales
growth in website visitors
social media likes, shares, or engagement

6. Consider the admin

Budgeting, processes, who’s going to be involved (the stakeholders – this stuff might be boring, but you need to think about it now to make sure your plan stays on track).

If you don’t budget, for example, you could find yourself spending money you don’t have in the pursuit of your targets. Or that you’re not making a good return on your investment (ROI).

And if you have employees, consider who’s best placed to help you reach your goals. They’ll all have different skill sets – could someone help out on the budgeting, while another runs your social media? Detail all of this in your plan.

7. Write a summary of your marketing plan

This is called the executive summary. While it should go at the start of your marketing plan, it’s best to write it after you’ve written the whole document. That’s because the executive summary has to include short descriptions of each section, highlighting the most important information.

Think of it as an elevator pitch – you’re hoping to attract investors to help you achieve your marketing goals, or win employees over to your plan. The executive summary needs to be compelling enough so that they carry on reading. Be sure to include a short summary of your business and its mission too.

Develop a go-to market strategy

For your marketing plan to succeed, you also need to make sure you have a fully developed go-to market strategy.

Whilst your marketing strategy can be used to continually promote your business and keep a competitive advantage, your go-to market strategy is crucial in developing your business and any new products or services.

Before you go to market, there are a few things you should think about first:

Understand customer personas

We’ve already discussed the importance of knowing your target customers, but you can develop customer personas to understand them even more.

There are many free digital tools you can use to help here. If you have a website or online presence, spend some time getting to know Google Analytics and Facebook Insights. This is a great way to see who’s visiting your site and interested in your products and services. Not only can this help you with developing further products, but it can also give you key insights on how to improve your digital marketing.

Map the customer journey

Once you know who your customers are, you need to map their journey. This is everything that happens from first discovering your business to becoming a customer.

This is often called the marketing funnel and can be broken down into the following levels:

awareness
consideration/research
conversion/decision
loyalty
advocacy/loyalty

Once you start mapping your customer journey – whether through digital tools or customer feedback – you can identify which areas may need improvement.

Example customer journey map for businesses

Create your distribution plan

And finally, the last step in any good go-to market strategy is your distribution plan. Think again about your target audience – and what apps, websites, and places they visit – and tailor your marketing accordingly. It’s a good idea to plan where and when you’ll distribute your marketing material before you begin creating it.

Marketing plan example for a hair and beauty business

Here’s a few ideas a hair and beauty business could try to attract more customers:

hair and beauty tutorial videos (on Instagram, for example)
email newsletter with updates about staff, discounts, and new products or services)
enter local awards
build a good business website with integrated appointment booking
collaborate with other local businesses – for example, stocking speciality tea and coffee or decorating with plants from a nearby florist
highlight your hair and beauty insurance, accreditations, and awards

Marketing planning on a budget

Creating a strong marketing plan doesn’t need a big budget. Here are some free ideas you could incorporate into your business marketing strategy:

start small and be highly targeted
enter business awards
send promotional offers along with your invoices or deliveries
email marketing
build a blog or social media following

Lastly, you might be able to use technology to save money on your marketing – here’s how small businesses could use AI to boost their marketing.

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