How to Create a Good Marketing Plan

A dream is just a dream until you write it down. Then it becomes a plan. It may sound corny, but it’s true! 

When it comes to marketing, a good plan puts your vision for your business in motion, sets the tone for your year, and helps you reach your goals in an organized, measurable way.

So what makes for a good marketing plan? In our experience, the most important elements to a successful plan are goals, good/better/best objectives, a simple, actionable to-do list, and a well-organized timeline. Here are a few best practices we live by when we create marketing plans for our clients at Fesyk Marketing.

Best Practices For Creating a Good Marketing Plan

Start Where You Are

Make a list that includes all of the marketing you are currently doing. Be sure to include how much it’s costing you (time and money). Don’t forget any work you do with community-based initiatives and charitable organizations. Then, identify the return on investment and which tactics are worth continuing. Which things are helping you achieve your business goals, and which ones aren’t worth the time or money?

Identify Your Overall Business Goals

Knowing where you want to go will help you decide how to approach your marketing. From the big, juicy dreams like selling your business and retiring on the beach, to more practical objectives like increasing sales and expanding your team. Having a vision helps determine which mix of marketing tactics will get you there.

Understand Your Values

When you have a clear idea of your business values, you can more clearly choose the right mix of marketing. Are you comfortable being the face of your business? Maybe you got into business to give back to your community on a greater scale? When your values align with your brand, magic happens, and it becomes easy to take action on your marketing. 

It took me a while to really find my business values and feel confident in the work I was doing to help other business owners grow their business. Click here to read my blog on how I found what lights me up in business! 

Find the Right Mix

Now, you just have to decide which marketing tactics fit your budget, your resources, and your objectives. Super easy! Ha! Just kidding. This is probably the hardest part for most people. 

There are literally thousands of ways to market your business. So how will you decide? Keep it simple:

1. Start with identifying your ideal client(s). 

 2. Do a little research to see where they hang out, both online and in the real world.

3. Pick the places that seem interesting, and align with the product or service you’re selling. 

4. Investigate those places, and decide if they are worth pursuing. 

5. Decide how much time or money you can afford to allocate to this mix of marketing opportunities.

6. Set your goals. Define what good/better/best results look like. 

7. Create a timeline so you can track and measure progress and results. 

8. Begin executing your plan – write the blogs, create the ads, post the Instagram stories!

9. Monitor your results to see if they are achieving your goals. If yes, great! If no, go back to step 1 and try something else.

You Don’t Have to Go It Alone!

A lot of effort goes into making a marketing plan for the year, but the results are worth it. 

Not ready to go it alone? Let’s talk! We love helping clients achieve their goals by creating and managing marketing plans. 

About Fesyk Marketing

We’re a boutique agency that believes great relationships are the key to having a successful and sustainable business. And we see opportunities for connection and collaboration everywhere!

Our amazing team specializes in creating content and leveraging social media to help our clients strengthen relationships, increase referral rates and attract new business. As a vision based company we create bespoke marketing plans with the end goal in mind and then work right alongside you to make it happen.

One of our favourite mantras is, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” and have proven time and time again that authentic, meaningful content is the foundation for building a community of loyal customers.

Does this sound interesting to you? Send us an e-mail to connect and learn more about how relationship marketing can help your business.