5 Things to Consider Before Creating Your Marketing Plan

You know that having a relationship with your audience is a critical factor in growing your business. So you create content for all of your social media channels, furiously posting and sharing. But when you check your profiles, you're not getting the results you want. This often leads to doing more of the same. Or becoming frustrated by the process and ignoring marketing altogether. The good news is that it's not you or the products or services you're offering. It's probably because you either don't have a marketing plan or don't have a good one.

"But I thought I already had a marketing plan!"

Often, people look at their social media posting schedule and think that it's their marketing plan. In actuality, it is just a part of it. A solid marketing strategy includes several considerations. Having a handle on specific metrics and concepts helps you shape a tailor-made plan that resonates with your audience, is in alignment with your goals, and is simple to implement and sustain. But before you head off to start building your plan, here are five things to consider.

Target Audience

No matter which resources you use to help you build your plan, you will always be encouraged - urged really - to know your target audience well. It's important to know demographic information about the people you're trying to reach, as well as psychographics (which essentially means what makes them tick) information about them. But, beyond that, you'll need to know how your target audience talks about their pain points. This helps you shape your language so you're talking less about what you offer and more about what problem your offering solves.

Overall Business Goals

Where do you want your business to be in the next year? In the next five years? You could write a marketing plan without this information. By why would you want to? Your overall business goals create a foundation for your plan. Your marketing should be designed to help you reach them.

Marketing Goals

Michael Brenner, CEO of the Marketing Insider Group, says there are three objectives for content marketing: reach, engagement, and conversion." Those objectives can help you frame your marketing goals in ways that are easy to track. Maybe your goal for the year is to reach 5,000 followers on Instagram or to have 1,000 people download your podcast. Perhaps you're more focused on conversion because you want to grow your income enough to hire more staff. When you're building the marketing goals, make sure you can tie them back to the overall goals you have for the business.

Activity Plan

This is also known as an editorial calendar or a posting schedule. You might already have one of these. Great! That means you can edit instead of creating one from scratch. When looking at your activity plan, one of the first things we recommend is looking at all of the social media channels you're using for marketing. People are often encouraged to be everywhere and find that they do not have the time, or the inclination, to manage several accounts at once. We believe the best channels are the ones you use. Are you camera shy? Then YouTube might not be the best choice for you. Is your audience primarily people over the age of 40? You can probably go ahead and shut down your TikTok account.

Marketing Budget

Let's be honest: good marketing is going to cost you. Maybe the line item on your budget for marketing right now is $0. That just means that even though you're not paying anything to get the marketing done, the time that you spend doing the work might mean you're not bringing any money in. No matter how you're paying for your marketing right now and for the foreseeable future, make sure that you include that in your overall budget. And if it's not already there, add "increase the marketing budget" to your business goals.

Marketing is the lifeblood of your business because without clients you've just got an expensive hobby. If you're confused about where to start or already know you need some support, book a consultation with A Creative Station. We can help you decide on the best plan of action for your business.