How To Create Your Marketing Plan

Review goals you’ve already set, or think about what you’d like to achieve 6 months / 12 months / 5 years from now!

Remember the SMART acronym: make sure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

We'll even share one of our own actual goals for 2024. We want to grow our website design service - but that's not specific enough to be a goal. So our SMART goal is to average one website design per month (i.e. 12 new websites by end of 2024). That’s about a 30% increase compared to last year, and we consider that a very achievable goal!

Think about your existing customer base. What customers do you love to deal with? How would you define them? This could be by shared demographic characteristics and/or behaviours and/or interests, or (for B2B) by industry type and business size. Depending on your products/services, you might have 2-3 ‘ideal’ customers.

To make it fun, you could give your ‘ideal’ customer a pseudonym. For example, a local gym’s ideal customer might be “Rebecca”. Rebecca lives in an immediate surrounding suburb, is female, aged 30-45, is a busy working mum and also concerned about health & improving strength.

By identifying your ideal customers, you’ll have a much better idea of their wants and needs. You’ll then be able to better connect with those people and improve customer acquisition. Woo!

Value Proposition

What does your ideal customer care about? How does your product or service help them? Why should they choose you instead of someone else (i.e. what are your points of difference?). This is all part of your “value proposition”.

Once you've defined your value proposition, you can then craft messages that speak directly to your ideal customer.

E.g. for the local gym, they'll want to let Rebecca know that they: offer short classes before & after working hours / tailor plans specifically for building muscle density for long term strength and health / have a creche available / have great bathroom facilities so getting ready for work after a workout is easy.

Offer

What will your customer be interested in? It should be something pretty irresistible, so your customer will feel like they're missing out if they're not taking you up on it. You might have multiple offers throughout the year.

Would your ideal customer want ongoing support? A product guarantee? An introductory offer? An exclusive, personalised deal? A bargain price? 

For a gym, a standard 'offer' is to have a special introductory price to attract potential customers.  They might also run 30 day programs throughout the year.

Budget

Have you set a yearly marketing budget? Will it remain the same each month or fluctuate?

Then, decide how much of that budget you should allocate to this particular goal and how many leads/sales you need to have coming in to make this goal profitable (it helps to have already crunched some data so you know your conversion rates etc!)

Channels / Platforms

Where does your customer spend time? How will you make sure they see your message?

This could be a mix of online & offline channels. In the case of the gym, they might  use a mix of organic social media activity + Facebook Ads + outdoor advertising + event sponsoring + collabs with other local businesses (such as cafes or hairdressers).

Of course each channel could (and should) have its own mini plan and its own KPIs to make it’s working. 

Executing (i.e. how to make it happen!)

Ok, it's all well & good to have a plan - but how will you execute it? You might find it easiest to go through this list for each channel you've identified above. Consider...

• What specific tasks need to happen? (and when?) 
• Do you have a team or family member (or marketing agency 😝) to help? 
• How much time will you need to make it happen on a daily / weekly / monthly basis? How often will you review your KPIs?
• Do you need any upskilling or resources to help?
• What calendar or project management software will you use to keep on track?

How often will you...

• Check your KPIs for each channel?  We recommend checking this very regularly so you which marketing channel is being most successful. (TIP: the most useful tool is asking each customer how they found you! If you're reliant on website leads, you can easily incorporate this question into your enquiry form)
• Check your goals? Will it be every month / quarter / every 6 months? 

Remember, the key to a successful marketing plan is flexibility. A marketing plan is not an ‘exact’ science. Some things will work. Some things work. The key is to keep it flexible - review and update your marketing plan as things change (and as you inevitably learn things along the way).