The final post in the year end marketing review series to help small business owners get their plan ready to kick off a successful year.

So far in this series we have:

• Identified whether our ideal client has changed over the last year;
• Set our goals for our business;
• Tweaked our product and service offerings to align with our ideal client;
• Determined our differentiator and reviewed our messages to ensure we are communicating it effectively;
• Reviewed our marketing content for consistency and accuracy;
• Evaluated our marketing results to determine what’s worked and what hasn’t;
• Assessed our online reputation to see what is really out there.

Armed with this information, we can now put a marketing action plan in place that will grow your business and achieve the goals that you set for yourself. I want to emphasize the word action because a marketing plan that sits in a drawer will not help grow your business. The marketing action plan sets priorities and dates on all your marketing activities to ensure they get done.

Where Do We Start?

In a previous post, I talked about the strategy / goal / tactic hierarchy where you take each goal you want to achieve and map the marketing strategies you will use, the tactics within each strategy and the associated materials needed. By laying out your plan this way, you can see where strategies and tactics may benefit multiple goals and what resources you may need before you can execute the strategy. To get started, download my marketing plan template at Masterful Marketing or on my Facebook Business Page and use that to help you decide what to put into motion. Start with what has been working and include that. Then look to define new activities that may have an impact on increasing your visibility and attracting your ideal client.

You also need to add the who, when, why and how much information for each activity:

• Who is going to do it? You or can you outsource?
• When does it need to get done?
• Why are you doing this activity? Is this activity relevant?
• How much does it cost in both money and time?

Make Your Plan Actionable

In order to make sure the when happens, lay the activities out in your calendar. If one of your activities is to begin blogging to develop credibility and awareness, decide how often you will write, when you will actually do the writing and create a list of topics that you can draw on when you need get writer’s block. Then schedule your time to accomplish this task. If you are giving a talk, not only schedule the actual time of the event, but also schedule time for you to prepare. If you really need help getting the tasks done, add the tasks to your to do list with a completion dates. I would schedule no more than 3 months at a time as you may need to adjust your activity level based on how your marketing is working. And remember to treat your appointments to market your business as seriously as you would treat a client appointment.

Laying out a calendar has several benefits:

• Seeing the time blocked off will make it easy to see whether you have over committed your time.
• Scheduling the activities in your calendar raises their level of importance.
• Having a schedule makes it far more likely that marketing will become a habit.

The key is to get started now. Remember that it takes time for marketing to work so the longer you wait, the longer it will be before you see any tangible results. Be realistic, be ready to adapt and create a marketing system that works for you so you can consistently market your business for the best results. Remember that your plan doesn’t need to be perfect, but it does need to happen.

What marketing activities are you putting into action in the next 30 days?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Marketing Action Plan is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

You search the web for “marketing plan small business” and you get terrifying results ranging from marketing plan templates that are too cumbersome for small business owners to articles such as the one from Microsoft called 5 easy steps to create a marketing plan where the 5 steps they list are 1) position your product; 2) tap your braintrust; 3) listen to your customers; 4) draft the plan and 5) track results.

Hm, thanks for the help.

Then you wonder why small business owners run for the hills when they hear the term “marketing plan” and never really grasp what they need to do to attract new customers and clients and grow their businesses. And although I’d love to give you a magic 5 steps to a winning marketing plan, it just doesn’t work that way.

So what is really important to know?

• Your vision for the business
• Who wants to buy your products or services
• Your competition
• Your differentiator (why should I buy from you?)
• Products and/or services and how you will price and package them
• Your message
• Your brand identity and image

I call this the foundation information – you have to have a good grasp of this for your business. But, if you have this information, you are half way there.

Now you need your goals – specific, measureable, attainable, relevant and timely (S.M.A.R.T.) - to give you a path to success. For every goal, what strategy, tactics and supporting materials do I need to achieve that goal?

The following example shows the hierarchy of the thought process you can go through.

Marketing Plan Goal Strategy Hierarchy

• Goal: Increase the number of qualified inbound opportunities per quarter to 50.
• Strategy: Create an online presence that projects my expertise and helps those searching find my web site.
• Tactics:
  • Begin blogging;
  • Write a monthly article for distribution via the blog, other sites, email newsletter;
  • Build an opt-in email list;
• Tools/activities needed:
  • Develop a WordPress site and blog incorporating my brand identity;
  • Develop a list of articles to be written and write one a month;
  • Create a free tool that your target would appreciate and give it away to encourage people to sign up for your mailing list.

Remember, each goal may have multiple strategies with several tactics that require different materials and tools. Once you’ve laid out all of your goals, strategies, tactics and materials with their associated resources and budget, you can then decide what you can do accomplish each month based on your time and budget.

Want more help? Download my complimentary marketing plan and budget spreadsheet template by signing up for my email list. You can find the signup form in the sidebar of Masterful Marketing or on my Facebook Business Page.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Small Business Marketing Plan is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.