How to Create a Small Business Marketing Plan in 5 Easy Steps

I don’t know about you, but for me, making a goal is easy. Coming up with a plan to achieve it? Not so much.

The bigger the goal, the harder it is to figure out where to start. The longer you try to figure it out, the more impossible it seems. And as the saying goes, a goal without a plan is just a dream.

In the past, I've especially struggled with creating plans for my business marketing. Creating goals like “get more customers” is awesome, but how do you put that into action?

The good news is that I've developed a system for doing just that. In this post, I want to share how to create a simple small business marketing plan that will have you knocking your goals out of the park.

5 Steps to Making a Small Business Marketing Plan

Step 1: Create your marketing goals

Obviously, you can’t make a marketing plan if you don’t have your goals picked out. Make sure you do that before you move on to the next step.

Example: For this post, let's say you're a small clothing brand. Your marketing goal next year is to improve your email marketing before your new collection releases, so you get more sales.

Need some inspiration to get you started? Check out this post with eight small business marketing goal ideas.

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10 Fantastic Ideas for Actionable Small Business Marketing Goals (With Examples)

Next year is just around the corner. It's time to start planning your yearly business goals if you haven’t already. An important category of your overall business goals is creating goals for your marketing. As you've probably learned, the old saying "if you build it, they will come" is not solid business advice. Without marketing goals, your dream won't succeed. Creating those marketing goals can be confusing. How do you pick the best one that aligns with your business and goals? This post offer

Step 2: Decide deadlines

After deciding your goals, choose your deadline for accomplishing them. This might be the end of the year, but it doesn't have to be.

Having a deadline gives you a firmer grasp on your goals and when you want to accomplish them. Some might be long-term, such as building your email list. Others might be smaller goals, like updating your website before your big summer launch.

Example: Your big collection release is scheduled for July. So you make June 30th your deadline for email marketing improvement.

Step 3: Break down the steps

Okay, now I want you to take that big marketing goal, whatever it is, and break it down into steps. These steps can be as big or as small as you like, although I suggest going as detailed as you can. Maybe make them into sub-points if it helps.

Breaking a big goal into little steps helps you figure out exactly what you need to do to accomplish it. Reading War and Peace is daunting, but reading one chapter a day for the next year is easy (if a long-term commitment).

Example: Steps for improving your email marketing might include:

• Take an email marketing course

  • Find a course

  • Take one lesson a day

  • Pass the final exam

• Update your sign-up forms and lead magnet

  • Assess your current offerings

  • Come up with an idea for your lead magnet

  • Create a pitch for signing up

• Cleaning up your list

  • Removing inactive subscribers

  • Segmenting your list

  • Updating your automations

Step 4: Make smaller goals

Now you have all the pieces you need to make your plan. I like to do this by making goals for each quarter, month, and week using the steps we made in the last stage of this process.

These small goals are easy to achieve, with short deadlines and low-effort tasks (in most cases). But by accomplishing them one by one, you'll hit your big goal in no time.

Example: Your Q1 goal might be taking a course and updating your lead magnet. In January, you decide to focus on learning, in February you create your new lead magnet, and in March you start working on the sign-up forms. Breaking it down even further, you find a course to take in January and make your goal one lesson a day.

Step 5: Put in the work

You have all the steps outlined. You know when your deadlines are. You’ve created a plan down to the week. The only thing left to do is get to work.

This is honestly the hardest part. Creating a plan takes effort, and sometimes, we use that to fool ourselves into thinking that we’ve done the work. But really, you need to put down your nose and follow the plan you’ve laid out.

You may also find your plan needs adjustment once you start trying to follow it. Maybe the mini goals you made are too big or too small, or you hit a roadblock you didn't expect. In that case, simply go through this process again.

Creating a plan to achieve your marketing goals doesn’t have to be hard or complicated. But it does require you to be honest, realistic, and hardworking.

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