Forget About A Marketing Plan For Your Small Business

By Author: Charen Smith
Total Articles: 25
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Even as a small business owner, you probably invested a great deal of time and energy into creating a business plan. Most banks require a pretty thorough business plan before they will offer financing to you. Even if you didn't need financing, writing up a business plan is a good way to make sure you stay grounded and on track.

You are probably also planning on writing - or are already writing - a strategic marketing plan for your small business. But let me tell you right now, doing so will be a major waste of your time.

Unless you are already selling on a large scale; unless you already have a large staff; unless you have a marketing budget at least six digits wide, you will not benefit from having an in-depth marketing plan.

Marketing plans are for big-budget operations. They are for the big boys; the companies that you see on the news and in the papers. They are not for small businesses.

Small businesses almost never have the type of marketing budget that makes a marketing plan necessary. If you wrote up a marketing plan, most of it would end up being pipe dreams; pages full of things that ...
... you would like to do, but are not yet able to do. So why even bother?

Instead, be more focused and, most importantly, simple when it comes to your marketing strategy. By this, I mean that you should determine 2 or 3 (yes, just two or three) targets that you will go after with your advertising.

Put these 2 or 3 targets on a big poster-sized sheet of paper, or on a poster board. Also on this board, put your overall marketing proposition. This is the concise way in which you are presenting your business to your customers. Brainstorm until you know what it is about your product or service that is valuable to customers. Then decide how you are going to present that benefit to your targets. Put this into a short sentence or two, and put it on your board.

Now, keep your marketing board in a place where you will see it every day. And refer to it whenever you make an advertising decision. Whenever you design a new ad, before you send it to the commercial color printing company, make sure that it presents your marketing proposition, and that it effectively goes after one of your targets. Do not go through with any advertising campaign that does not live up to the board test.

That is it! Just a simple poster board with your overall marketing proposition and a few marketing targets. That is a whole lot easier than writing a marketing plan, isn't it? Plus, for a small business, it will be a lot more effective, too.

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