Creating a Simple Marketing Plan

For small businesses, attracting attention is important. You’ll want to have a plan when creating marketing tactics for your local base. Relying on word of mouth alone is risky, so here are some tips on marketing your business to the local public:

Create Objectives

You’ll want to start with general ideas for your marketing campaign. What do you want to accomplish with your business plan? If you’re a new business, perhaps creating awareness or getting customers to try your location is the goal. But if you’re established, maybe increasing sales or creating promotions to keep customers intrigued is the way to go. In any case, having a game plan will be beneficial.

Understanding Your Target Market

Understanding who is supporting your business is imperative. If you understand this, it will be easier to create the right environment and keep customers coming back. Conducting market research into demographics, age, income level, interests, etc. of your audiences will help you understand the local market. Once you know who the primary audience is, you can construct an environment that fits their preferences.

Being Familiar With Competition

Knowing who your competitors are is a vital component of being successful. What kinds of services do they provide? What are they doing well/not well? Who are they attracting? And much more. The way they market themselves is also something to be familiar with. Digital marketing is a growing way to market businesses. This is a great way to stay competitive amongst other local businesses.

Create a Marketing Strategy

The first part of your campaign you’ll want to address is your budget. Being conscious of the people and advertising costs associated with your budget will help you allocate properly. If you’re willing to spend, diversifying your marketing tactics can be helpful. Mixing traditional and digital marketing can reach a larger audience. This can help sift out who is willing to visit your location. Once you figure this out, creating an identity is the next step. Lean into this: the product, the image, the demographics, etc. It will help define who you are and what you’re all about.

Listen and Modify

Paying attention is the best thing you can do when creating a marketing plan. Once you execute it, you’ll see how it unfolds. Naturally, not every marketing channel will work. Sometimes old school marketing techniques will appeal to the locals. Seeing signs, hearing a radio ad, or receiving a mailer may be enough to get customers to visit. But digital marketing may do the trick too. Social media, blogs, and influencers could be your key to success. The point is this: be open to changing! Working out the kinks is a natural part of building a brand and finding a successful marketing campaign. From there, you can see where you’re spending, who is your main base, and where to focus for the future.