Small Business Marketing Plan

The Importance of The Marketing Plan

For small businesses the marketing plan is one of the most important tools available to ensure a company is on track to create and keep new customers.

A well developed marketing plan will help companies attract target customers by offering products and services that satisfy customer's needs, demands and wants then delivers exceptional customer service, convenience and value to keep them returning to the business.

The key to creating and implementing a successful marketing plan is to remain customer focused rather than profit driven. The marketing team's job is to foster a relationship then to hand the customer to the sales team to encourage a purchase.

Define Target Market: In order to point your marketing efforts in the right direction spend time researching to determine, as specifically as possible, who you are offering your product or service to. Determine the demographics, the buying behaviors and needs of your customers.

Ask For Feedback: Speak to your customers. How did they hear about you? Do they like your product? What could you improve?

Build Relationships: Find creative ways to make your customer feel special and valued. Developing long term relationships will help create repeat customers.

Attracting New Customers

Despite tight marketing budgets, small businesses have many opportunities to effectively  and creatively reach their customers. Below are a few ideas to get you started:

Send Press Releases: News stories are a great way to gain free attention for your business. When sending a press release make sure you have an interesting angle and your story is newsworthy.

Create a Newsletter: Email makes it easy to stay in contact with your customers. Build your email list, ask for permission to contact each customer, then distribute a monthly newsletter to stay on their radar.

Offer Samples: Where does your target demographic spend time? Go there and offer samples to

 

Keeping Your Customers

After you spend time and energy to attract a customer to your business it is vital to find ways to keep customers coming back. Small businesses have an advantage over larger companies with their ability to stay in close contact with customers and their ability to quickly change managerial tactics.

By offering a superior and unexpected quality of customer service, value and convenience your return customers may become your biggest asset.

Creating a culture of great customer service requires training employees to take care of and listen to customers, to offer personal attention and focus on service.

 

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Event Planning to Attract Customers

Plan A Great Event

A great way to bring people together is to offer them something fun and free to do in a relaxed environment. Any business owner, if creative enough, can bring their customers together to create a community event centered around the thing your business does best.

These events will give your business exposure in a fun setting and customers will identify your business with the memories they create at the event.

Below are a few ideas:

Summertime Movie Series: Offer a sit-in movie once a week using the extra space you have at your business location. Guest can bring lawn chairs or blankets for outdoor spaces. Offer free popcorn. If you don't have the space you could create and sponsor a film series in the town park.

Choose a genre of films based on the industry you are in.
For example, if you are a restaurant show 'Ratatouille' or 'Food Inc'. If you are a bookstore show 'You've Got Mail'. If you are a doggie day care show 'Hotel for Dogs', ' Beethoven' and 'Homeward Bound.'

Have an ice cream social: You provide the ice cream, the toppings and the seating and they will come! This is a great way to get people to feel good about your business and you will be providing a safe, fun environment for families, children and teens to be in at night.

Organize a town sports tournament: Everyone loves kickball, softball and volleyball! People will associate all the fun they are having with your business.

Offer a class: Cooking classes, dog training sessions, drawing 101, lectures, wine and cheese tastings or a how-to class.

Support local artists: Invite local artist to display their work at your location. Or, host a craft fair and offer the products of your favorite local artisans.

Every business has different amounts of resources and space available and each community has different tastes and dynamics. Be sure to create an event that fits your budget, utilizes your available space and targets your demographic specifically.

Be creative and make sure to join the fun!