Create the Perfect Marketing Plan

You don’t have to be a marketing whiz to know that creating the perfect marketing plan can keep your business focused and on track for success. The digital landscape is everchanging, which makes the ability to evolve, assess, and reassess your plan for growth a must. We’re sharing a guide for creating the perfect marketing plan to keep you and your business focused on what matters most.

Conduct A Baseline Analysis

It’s impossible to plan for the future if you don’t have an idea of where you are now. Conducting a good ole SWOT analysis can help you define your current landscape. Document your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats so you can see from a bird’s eye view what you’re good at and areas that may need improvement moving forward.

If you don’t have one already, conducting a competitive analysis can reveal new ways of differentiating yourself among other similar businesses. Use this step as a method of brainstorming ways to make your business better as a team. Most team members enjoy adding input and become more vested in the future if they are part of the process.

Determine Your Target Audience

You may have determined your target audience early on when you first started your business but it doesn’t hurt to revisit this step. Clearly define your target audience and that means including demographics, shopping behaviors, geographical location, yearly income, etc. Be as specific as possible.

 This information sets the guardrails for keeping your marketing efforts specific and productive. The last thing you want to do is spend valuable funds marketing to people who are not likely to purchase the product or service you are offering.

Set SMART Goals

Now that you’ve assessed your current situation and determined your ideal customer, it’s time to think about where you want to go. Setting SMART goals is an art but following this theory will set the framework to successfully reach your goals. SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.

For example, a SMART goal might be that you want to increase your Facebook engagement by 10% in three months. Depending on your strategy, this goal is specific (Facebook engagement), measurable (10%), attainable (10% is reasonable growth), relevant (Facebook is relevant to your business), and timely (three months).

Define Your Approach

Now that you’ve determined your goals, it’s time to figure out how you’ll reach them. This will serve as a roadmap for growth. For example, take our earlier example of increasing engagement on your Facebook profile by 10% in three months. You can achieve this by offering a seasonal promotion or coming up with a highly relatable post that will guarantee this increase.

Set Your Budget

After working through ways to accomplish your goals, you’ll want to set budget parameters. For example, if one of your initiatives involve paid advertising campaigns, you’ll want to plan out each campaign and assign a reasonable budget for each one. This keeps you from spending unnecessary funds on initiatives that don’t support your goals.

Once you’ve worked through all these steps, try putting it in a formal document. There are a ton of plans out there and some even go into deeper detail, but it’s all about selecting a plan that works best for you and your business.

Now that you understand to fundamentals of what goes into creating the perfect marketing plan, let’s chat about how we can help! At ARK Marketing, our team is ready and able to guide you. Contact us today

Check back soon for more useful tips on how to leverage your small business in a big world of competition. If you need help managing certain aspects of your small business or you’d like to know more about the services ARK Marketing has to offer, email us or comment below! Also, follow us on Facebook and Instagram for industry news, inspiration, and helpful tidbits for finding small business success.

Sincerely,

The ARK Crew