Many businesses don’t realize what marketing is and how a great marketing plan can elevate your business. Some think of marketing as just one more thing to put their time and energy into, but that’s incorrect. If you don’t create a plan and think about your marketing strategy, you’re setting yourself up for failure. It’s a necessity for each and every business, no matter how small or new you are. It’s also important for older businesses to re-evaluate your plans and see what changes you might make to elevate your business for the future. We’ll go over some marketing basics in this article, to help you understand what you can do to integrate a marketing plan in your business today.

What Is Marketing?

Marketing is process of creating a strategy or plan to showcase your company’s products or services in the best manner to reach your audience. Creating a marketing plan is an effort to increase business by providing what your customers need and want in a way that reaches them effectively. The plan should involve how you sell products, what your business development goals are, and how you advertise to your clients. Marketing involves creativity and your overall brand, but more importantly, it involves your business strategy and how you plan on taking your business to the next level.

Things to Think About

There are many things to think for your business in order to create an effective and profitable marketing strategy.

What are your company values?
What makes your business unique?
How are you different than your competitors?
What can you do to differentiate yourself?
Who is your target market?
How can you effectively reach that market?
What are you doing currently that is working?
What are you doing that isn’t working and can be improved upon?

Creating Your Plan

Answering the questions above will help you start to visualize a plan and what needs to be done. Here are some basic things to include in your plan:

• Sales goals for this year, 5 years, 10 years
• A detailed description of your current audience (25-30 year old females, married, living on the beach, love to shop at the Gap) the more details, the better
• A detailed description of your target audience (who you want to reach in the future)
• What you want your brand to say about your company and the values you stand for

Executing Your Plan

You will also need action items, what to work on this year to help reach your goals. Some ideas on action items:

• Create a better website that will help reach your target audience
• Get more involved in social media to spread the word about your company
• Participate in local networking events
• Start a monthly email newsletter to update existing and past clients on what you’re doing and how you can benefit them

Coming up with a marketing plan isn’t easy and it isn’t something that can be fully explained in one article. Hopefully this has given you an idea of what to think about and a place to start. Marketing is a process, one that can’t be rushed or done overnight but it is important and helpful for the future of your business.

Resources

Marketing Basics for the Small Business
Market Your Way To The Top
Marketing 101 – The Essentials of Marketing
Marketing Basics 101
Marketing from Wikipedia