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How to create a marketing plan as a first time entrepreneur
Rebecca Appleton • 3 March 2020
Creating a marketing plan
Creating a marketing plan is an essential part of getting your new business underway as a first time entrepreneur – but it’s one of those documents that many people won’t have seen before, much less had to create.
Our award-winning Business-In-A-Box solution comes complete with extensive sales and marketing experience so there is no need to fear the prospect of pulling together a plan which outlines how you’ll find customers (and how they’ll find you) and how you’ll go about building your business profile. Read on to see just how straightforward it can be…
Phase 1: SWOT
Phase one of your marketing plan outlines your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Think about what you’re good at here, where your USPs lie, what your expertise is and then, what competitors are offering. This section is essentially about knowing your market and where you fit into it. This is a good chance to do a little competitor research if you haven’t done so already –not only does this give you some useful intel on what your rivals are doing, it can also provide some inspiration for your own marketing activities and strategies going forwards into the lates phases of your plan.
Phase 2: Customers
In the next section, you’ll define who you target market is. In marketing speak this is often called developing personas. You need to build up a picture of your potential clients here to get to know them – this will help you then choose the best ways to reach them when it comes to deciding what marketing activity you’ll perform and where your marketing budget will be allocated.
Phase 3: Goals and activity
As your business develops, you may want to pull out goals and create that as a separate section in its own right but, when you’re just getting started, you can couple it with the main section of your plan; the marketing activity.
Here, you’re going to really hone in on how you’re going to conduct your marketing which channels you’re going to use and the tactics you’ll employ to meet your goals.
While you will want to be specific in terms of outlining whether you plan to invest in say Google Ads along with newspaper ads and listing your tactics, it can be more helpful to also split this section up into the distinct stages of the purchase process or customer journey. Initially you may find it easiest to start with three sections; cold, warm and hot. Under each section, outline how you’ll market to those leads and pull in the relevant activity from your tactics list.
Phase 4: Budget
Once you know who you want to reach and how you’ll reach them, you can finish up with the budget phase of your plan. This part will likely result in you making some edits to phase three because as you gather costs for your intended tactics, you may find that you don’t have enough money in place to cover everything. This means you’ll need to refine or stagger your activity until you find a mix that meets your goals and your finances. Your marketing plan is intended to be a living document rather than one that is set in stone so don’t be afraid to return to the plan and tweak it as you learn new things, gather measurable data from your marketing and grow your sales to free up more budget.
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