Many small to medium businesses want to create Marketing Plans to help grow their business ... but where do you start?

Your first step should always be to gain 100% clarity on your business goals, targets and objectives. Marketing is just one of the vehicles to help you achieve these goals and is not an end in itself.

Physically, a marketing plan can either stand alone or be a part of your business plan. No matter where it is located, your marketing plan needs to be understood and designed in the overall context of your business goals and objectives. If you are not clear on where you want your business to go, then no amount of marketing activities will make your business as profitable as it could be.

So - what goes into your marketing plan template?

Before you start filling in the blanks, you need to do some research.

Research is one of the most overlooked and yet the most critical part of any marketing plan. You need to identify your direct and indirect competitors. Locate who they are and learn from them.

Your research should include:

• Details about what they are doing;


• Try and find out where they are marketing - and get copies of their marketing material where possible (either cut ads from papers, print web copy, check out blogs, ask for an information pack etc);


• Identifying the sort of customers they are attracting;


• You need to work out what they do better than you;


• Also work out the things you do better than them;


• Trying to determine how they price their products (are they the cheapest, most expensive - what is their pricing strategy);


• Your assessment why people choose to buy from them and not you.

The next phase of your research is your customers. The more you get to know and understand who they are and their wants and needs, the better you will be to be able to satisfy what they are looking for.

Your marketing plan should include as many details as you can discover about your customers. Try and work out if they fall into a certain age group or gender; identify where they live; see if you can determine approximately how much they earn; identify what your customers value in their lives - what is important to them and what they dislike; determine how often they buy products or services like yours and most importantly, what they look for in a business and a product.

I usually recommend businesses define their perfect "A" client - the sort of person they love to work with or sell to, and include details about attitude and personality if this is important to you. For example - my "A" clients generally are entrepreneurs, constantly full of great ideas and need help in focusing and taking the ideas to completion. They may be slightly "scattered" in approach, value knowledge and experience and appreciate holistic solutions rather than task solutions. They also pay on time and are "raving fans" of my services.

When understanding your customers, really get inside their mind. You want to understand and know who they are because you are in business not just to make money, but because you want to make a difference, make people happy and solve their problems. The more you understand someone the easier it is to help them.

The next stage of your marketing plan is to research your own products and services. Impartially look at each of your products and services and ask yourself what is great and not so great about each one.

Assess the reason why you have each service/product and make sure you are clear on what need it is trying to fill. You need to research the reason why people buy the product or service as well as the reason why they don't buy it. You need to know precisely the results your service or product achieves for people.

Other research

Yes ... just a few more bits of research are needed before you can begin to put everything into your marketing plan template. Some things you should look at include the effectiveness of your current distribution method as well as your production and sales processes.

Once you have all of this data, you can start your marketing planning for the coming year.

Many of the marketing planning templates available on the market were written before internet marketing became big ... and don't address the challenges of running an internet business. This means you are only getting part of the story. All modern businesses need to plan for both on-line and off-line marketing.

Your marketing plan needs to include a section on online marketing. Online marketing is much more than a website - it includes things such as affiliate programs, auto-responders, blogs, e-books, shopping carts and social networking sites. Your marketing plan template needs to include actions in each of these areas.

Most businesses think about print marketing as the main part of their marketing plan - and yes it is still important. Your plan needs to include things like marketing collateral such as brochures, flyers, business cards, corporate gifts and posters. It also includes direct mail and customer mail. These two areas are some of the most overlooked and most profitable forms of marketing you can do. Print marketing also includes things such as books and articles. Make sure your marketing plan template addresses each of these areas.

Advertising is another area you need to consider in your marketing plan template - both on-line and off-line. Always make sure you calculate your return on investment by tracking the results and measuring the responses you get. If you are not at least making back the cost of the campaign each and every campaign you are throwing away money - there are much better methods available than expensive brand advertising.

PR is another chapter in your marketing plan template. Consider the events will you hold or be part of. Work out what is your press release cycle and will you run any seminars/ teleseminars/ webinars? Consider will you exhibit at a tradeshow or sponsor someone or a cause?

The last big area in your marketing plan template is the general category - and it is one where you can create massive amounts of customer traffic. This includes alliances, client nurturing, upselling, competitions, joint ventures, referrals and a whole lot more.

With all of these areas include projected costs, budgets and return on investment.

Once you have filled in your marketing plan template you need to take action on your plan. The bottom line with marketing is you need to do a little bit every day. Work out the areas you want to tackle, plan them into your calendar, get advice on how to do it and then implement and measure the results.