HOW TO CREATE A MARKETING PLAN

By Allegra Chapman – Marketing and Mindset Coach

How to create a marketing plan

When you’re launching a new business, one of the first things you need to think about is your marketing plan. But where do you even start? There are a million “influencers” on social media promising you the one magic secret to great marketing, and ten million business books promising you a formula for instant fame.

In reality, there are no silver bullets or quick wins, and the only “secret” to good marketing is getting really clear on the time-honoured questions – who, what, why, where, when and how.

1. Who are you trying to help?

One of the biggest mistakes most businesses make when planning their marketing strategy is to focus on themselves first. It’s tempting to start with what you do, what you care about, what you want to say about your offering – that’s the bit you’re an expert in. But if you start with the people you are trying to reach – what they actually want and need – then your messaging, and its execution, will be far more powerful. 

Draw up a profile of your ideal customer or client.

What sort of person are they? What’s their job? What do they do for fun? What keeps them up at night? What do they get excited about?

If you can use analytics tools and market research to profile your customers, so much the better. If you have to rely on your own understanding of them, then make sure you spend time really thinking about them. Get to know them like you would a good friend. You need to become very, very good friends with these people if you want them to choose to spend money with you.
 

2. What do you do?

The next component of your marketing strategy sounds simple – what does your business do? It’s a question that a lot of businesses struggle to answer, however. Many people – probably the majority of people – get caught up in just getting business and lose sight of what their company is actually meant to be. Or they create beautiful mission statements and flowery language for their website that is incomprehensible to anyone that doesn’t live and breathe their business. 

What’s your elevator pitch? You have 10 seconds to describe to someone who is totally new to your brand and your industry exactly what you do and what’s good about it. What would you say? If you can’t sum up what you do in three sentences or less, anyone listening to you (or reading about you) will lose interest pretty quickly. 

3. Why should anyone care?

Now that you know who your ideal customer is and what matters to them, you can think about how what you do would interest them. What problem are you solving for them? How are you making their lives better or easier? What’s special about your offering that would be better for them than anyone else’s? 

Another important element of your “why” is the values you want to be known for. What do you want people to associate with your business? What differentiates you from everyone else? What motivated you to do what you do in the first place? What impact do you want to have on your industry, on your clients, on the world?

4. Where can you reach your audience?

You’ve probably read how important it is to have a blog. And why you need to have a Facebook Page. And a Facebook group. And why you must be doing Instagram Stories. And that podcasts are the new big thing. And of course video is incredibly powerful. Let’s not forget the value of networking… The fact is, you can’t do it all. Especially if it’s just you trying to do it – on top of all the other things you need to do to run your business. 

You need to get crystal clear on where your audience spend their time. Do they prefer Facebook or Instagram? Are they big TikTok users or have they never heard of it? Do they read newspapers or are they more into blogs? If they have a question, where are they likely to go to ask?

You know your audience well by now, so you know what they’re up to and where they’re spending their time. If not, get following them around (online, not literally, let’s not get creepy)! Then pick the channels that you think are most important to them, as many as you feel are manageable for you (be realistic about that), and focus on those.

5. When can you have the most impact?

Now we’re getting into the real detail of your marketing plan, looking at when you should be creating marketing materials. This means both at a higher, overview level – what times of year should you be running campaigns, what seasonal activity can you capitalise on – and at a more granular level – what days will you do what, what times of day will you be active?

At this point, it might be helpful to create a calendar planner that you can use to map out your activity. Make sure you only focus on seasonal opportunities that are truly relevant to your brand, your audience and your shared values.

Don’t forget to include times that are important for your business – new product launches, sales, events you will be attending or running, anything else that impacts your year. 

Once you have an idea of what opportunities there are for your business across the year, you can start to plan on a more detailed level. When you’re creating online content, every platform has a different algorithm that affects how often it is best for you to post, so you will need to look into that for your chosen channel in order to maximise your reach.

You will also want to think about your audience – when will they be looking for the content you’re producing? If you’re targeting a business audience, for example, providing content they can read on their commute or in the office is a great idea. They probably won’t want to hear about it on a Saturday when they’re trying to relax and not think about work!

Most social platforms also give you analytics tools to tell you what days, and what times, your audience is active so you can serve them content when they’re looking for it.

6. How can you communicate all this?

You now have the foundation for a powerful marketing plan – you know who you’re talking to, what you want to communicate and why it matters, as well as where and when to do it. Now all you need to work out is how to do it. This is the bit where you can get really creative. If you’ve done the groundwork thoroughly with the points above, this will be a doddle! 

7. Who + What + Why + Where + When = How can you communicate all this?

As an example, you’re looking to attract new mums with your massage business. You want to be known as the brand that takes some of the stress out of early motherhood. You’ve found out your audience are active on Facebook late at night when they’re feeding their babies, and you’ve got a special offer on for February.

How about creating a Facebook campaign posting tips for relaxation and getting back to sleep after you’ve been woken up for late night feeds? One of the posts could sympathise with your audience about being up late feeding. It could ask mums to tag their partner in the comments, if they’d like them to buy that special offer as a Valentine’s Day gift.

Add top level creative ideas like this into the year planner above, so you have a key focus for each month, and hey presto – you have a marketing plan for the whole year!

When you come to look at each month in detail, you can then work out what needs to be created, and when and where you’ll put it, on a day-by-day basis. Don’t forget to look ahead to what you have coming up over the next few months. This will ensure you have the resources in place that you need to make all these great ideas happen. 

That’s it – that’s all there is to creating a powerful marketing plan. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated or confusing. You just need a clear idea of who you’re talking to, what you want to say and why, and where and when you can best reach them. Then you need to make sure you give yourself a manageable amount of ways to do that, and get out there and make it happen! 

If you want support to put your plan together, or someone to guide you through the process of executing that plan and to keep you accountable for getting it done, a marketing mentor could be exactly what you need.

For more information, email hello@allegra-chapman.com