How to create a small business marketing plan
Write down one goal for the next quarter, the two or three activities most likely to move it, what you will do each week, and how you will know whether it worked. That fits on a page. Marketing plans fail because they are long enough to feel serious and detailed enough that nobody opens them twice.
Pick one goal, not four
More customers, higher prices, more repeat business and a new service line are four different plans that pull in different directions. Choosing one for a quarter means the weekly decisions are easy, because there is a single question to ask about anything proposed: does this move the goal.
Choose activities by evidence, not habit
The right two or three activities are usually the ones where you already have some signal — a channel that has produced customers, a service people keep asking about. Starting somewhere entirely new is occasionally right and is always slower, because you are buying information before you can buy results.
Decide what happens weekly
A plan that only exists at the quarter level cannot be followed. Turn each activity into something that happens on a specific day: the follow-ups on Monday, the posts written Wednesday, the review of numbers on Friday. Weekly is the unit at which small businesses can actually keep a commitment.
Write the measure before you start
Decide in advance what result would make this worth repeating. Chosen afterwards, the measure will always be the one the results happen to support, and the plan will look successful every quarter while the business does not change.
Common questions
How long should the plan be?
One page. If it is longer, the extra pages are the part nobody will read, and their presence makes the important part harder to find.
How often should I revisit it?
Weekly for the activities, quarterly for the goal. Changing the goal more often than that means never finding out whether anything worked.
What if the quarter is going badly by week four?
Change the activities, keep the goal. Abandoning the goal early is what makes a business feel busy and directionless at the same time.