Many small business owners don’t think they need a marketing plan. Either it’s all in their head already or they’ll think of it as it comes up. But even a one-person business needs a marketing plan. Why?
When you organize what your marketing tactics will be for the following year, you can see where you might fall short on time, money or other resources. Let’s say you decide to launch a month-long marketing campaign starting right before Thanksgiving to go right up until Christmas Eve. That sounds fine and dandy, but who will be in charge of marketing while you are in the store, tending to customers or in the back, creating the product? If you have a marketing plan in place, you’ll know that you’ll probably need to hire some part-time help to get you through the holidays if you have a big campaign going on.
You have a record of what you did and what you’re going to do. You’re probably thinking its obvious, but it’s an important point. If you fly by the seat of your pants with your marketing strategy, odds are you won’t remember every single thing you did in the past 6 months. That means you could end up repeating a strategy that didn’t work too well the first time around, meaning it won’t work the second time either, meaning you’ll waste your money. By creating a marketing plan, and commenting on what worked and what didn’t, you can shape up the following year’s marketing plan by including only winning strategies that brought you sales.
It’s easier to get through slow times. When you know you’ll have slow times in the sales cycle, as every business does, instead of sitting around wishing for customers to walk through your door, you can be preparing marketing materials for the next big marketing push. This will give you more time to be with customers once you do get busy again, and you won’t be pulling your hair out because there aren’t enough hours in the day. You’ll have plenty of hours because you were able to work ahead of time.
Helps you and your employees to focus. A good marketing plan includes goals, and no one, not even the best entrepreneur in the world, can work toward a goal that hasn’t been set yet. Creating a marketing plan enables you to put your goals in writing, and therefore gives you and your employees something to push for.
It helps you reflect on the big picture. In the day-to-day grind, it’s easy to forget why you’re doing all this, especially the things that don’t relate directly to making daily sales. Writing a marketing plan allows you to take a step back and look at what your goal is for the next six months or in a year from now to give you reason to print that flyer or attend that industry mixer. A marketing plan keeps you motivated, and motivation is something every person could use a little more of.
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