5 Components Every Marketing Plan Should Have

A comprehensive marketing plan is essential for any small business. It creates a roadmap to help see the current state of your business, and what channels can be used to reach new prospects.

For small business owners, time and resources are scarce, so an effective strategy can help ensure neither are being wasted. While each marketing plan should be unique to the business and their goals, there are components every successful marketing plan should include.

Business Analysis

The first step in reaching your marketing goals is an thorough assessment of current marketing and business initiatives. Take an inventory of all marketing channels that are currently active which can include: content, lead generation, e-mail marketing, social media, paid search advertising, and search engine optimization. The analysis should also note past marketing successes and failures within these channels.

Your target audience should also be clearly identified, along with any potential audiences not currently being marketed to. Finally general business goals should be identified.

Competitor Analysis

Knowing how your competitors are marketing themselves provides a lot of crucial information and provide direction on which channels may be successful to reach your target audience.

A competitor analysis can also identify channels not currently being utilized, and have may have marketing potential. One of the most important insights that can be gained, is evaluating your competitors online presence and the amount of effort they are putting into marketing. This can help you gauge the resources you need to stay ahead of your competitors.

New Initiatives

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Once you have an overview of the current status of your marketing, the report should identify new objectives. This should state current opportunities that can elevate your marketing strategies, and long term goals to implement.

Initiatives should be strategic and based on the previously stated business and competitor analysis. A good marketing report should also bring new ideas to the table, and think outside of the box.

Consider having a Marketing Strategist can help identify these initiatives, and bring creative ideas to marketing plan.

Implementation Strategy

After new initiatives have been identified, marching orders should be issued to bring these marketing efforts to life.

Each marketing channel should have an action plan of how each campaign is going to be carried out including how to allocate resources and time to implement new campaigns.  A plan to measure and analyze results is also necessary to gauge success so you know what is working and what isn’t.

Budget Calculations & Forecasting

After resources for implementation have been identified, an estimated budget should be created within the report.This should include the cost of man-power, tools needed, and advertising costs.

Forecasting should cover all future campaigns, with the knowledge that budgets will be subject to change based on initial results. The report should have the calculated budget compared against projected profits. A return on investment can then be calculated and included in the summary of the report.

At EmoryDay we have a team of marketing experts that can create a customized strategic marketing plan for your business. For over ten years we have worked to grow small businesses through results driven marketing and lead generation. Learn more about our Strategic Marketing Plans or view a Sample Plan.

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