Marketing is probably one of the most important things you’ll ever do in your business in order to grow it, so if you’re currently just winging it and hoping for the best, or even worse not having any kind of marketing in place, then this is something you’ll really need to consider changing.
In this post, we’re going to share with you just how to create a simple monthly marketing plan for your business so that you can hopefully beat some of the overwhelm you’re perhaps dealing with when it comes to marketing.
Of course it’s important to mention that in order to create a solid marketing plan, you need to have a strategy already in place, because if you don’t know what your strategy is then it’s going to be very difficult to come up with a clear plan for how to market your business in a way that actually gets you the results you want and you’ll just spend more time spinning your wheels trying to figure it out.
How To Create A Monthly Marketing Plan
1. Decide on a marketing budget
A marketing budget won’t apply in all situations, but for example if you’re going to be using paid marketing strategies such as Facebook ads and even Pay Per Click or hiring an agency that specializes in SEO, then you’re definitely going to need to set a budget for this, so it’s important to determine this as early as possible to avoid being caught out later down the road.
2. Choose your channels
When it comes to marketing, you certainly have a lot of different channels to choose from both online and offline, do deciding if you’re going to be using one or the other or a bit of both is a good place to start so that you can move on to the next stage of planning out your marketing activities is something that should be taken care of from the beginning.
3. Choose your activities
As mentioned above, after your marketing channels are chosen, then choosing your activities comes next. So for example, are you going to be using primarily offline strategies such as networking and trade shows? If so, you should research networking events in your local area as well as places like infinityexhibits.com to see what’s needed to make a trade show a success.
4. Create a schedule
Like everything else in your business, and in fact life, for marketing to be successful, it should be planned out as much as possible and whether you intend to plan out your marketing weekly, monthly, quarterly, or even annually.
It’s important to create a dedicated marketing schedule that you stick to for your business that lists out the things mentioned above so you always know what’s happening and when.
Creating a marketing schedule isn’t actually as difficult as it appears, and you can use a physical planner or calendar, or you can use a digital calendar or even a task management tool like Trello to keep things organized and in one place.
5. Automate
In order to keep things organized both in life and in business, automation is a key thing you’re going to need to learn, and although it can definitely take a while to set things up in regards to automation.
But once you do, it’s worth it because you have far more time available to focus on the things you actually have strength in and instead of trying to work on things that don’t actually suit you, light you up, or are not things you’re good at and that take away from you growing your business properly.
When it comes to automating your marketing, you can use things like email schedulers to send emails to your list, you can use posting automation software for things like social media posts and blogs, and you can even use things Zapier that bring all your apps and automations together so that things are automated as much as possible.
6. Review
Everything in business is all about testing what works for you, but the only way you can actually test what works is by doing things in the first place, so the best thing you can do is to set aside some time in your schedule each week or month to look at all your marketing activities and see what’s working and what you could be doing better.
This gives you a clear picture of your marketing so you can see if you’re close to achieving your goals and what may need to be altered if you’re not close to achieving them.
Lime Collins says
What an amazing article!