Marketing Plans
How-to guides and templates to help you create an effective marketing plan for your small business.
- Get customers
- Keep customers
- Get existing customers to buy more
- Offload unprofitable customers
- Create customer advocates (people who refer others and spread positive word-of-mouth about you for free)
It's how well you do all of this that determines your success of your marketing.
Before you develop your marketing plan, know what customers and clients really want...
This is a great tip from Seth Godin...
"Not just the first one. And not all three. But you really need at least one.
1. Results. If you can offer a return on investment, an engineering solution, more sales, no tax audits, a cute haircut, the fastest rollercoaster, a pristine beach, reliable insurance payouts at the best price, peace of mind, productive consulting or any other measurable result, this is a great place to start.
2. Thrills. More difficult to quantify but often as important, partners and customers respond to heroism. We are amazed and drawn to over the top effort, incredible risk taking on our behalf, the blood, sweat and tears that (rarely) comes from a great partner. A smart person working harder on your behalf than you'd be willing to work--that's pretty compelling.
3. Ego. Is it nice to feel important? You bet. When you greet us at the door with a glass of white wine, put our name in the lobby of the hotel, actually treat us better than anyone else does (not just promise it, but do it)... This can get old really fast if you industrialize and systemize it, though."
Results = consistently delivering a great product or service.
Thrills = great customer experiences and doing things that are "buzzworthy"
Ego = understanding emotional "hot buttons" and how to make someone feel like a VIP
MarketingZone How-to Guides to Help:
-
How to Improve Customer Satisfaction
- Or if you sell to patients, Patient Satisfaction
- Brand Love - what it is and how to create it
-
How to Get More Referrals
- Word of Mouth Marketing
- Viral Marketing - Learn how to get other people to become your free sales force, sharing positive word of mouth with others.
- Marketing Strategy - how to create a winning marketing strategy
Marketing Planning How-to Guides
In a hurry to create your marketing plan?
There are some amazing software, tools and templates that you can buy that have pre-written marketing plans that get you 80% of the way there and then you just edit to customize for your situation. Top Marketing Plan Suppliers
Related Articles to Marketing Plans
- Advertising Strategy - if you are spending money on advertising, your advertising strategy needs to be the "lead dog" for your marketing.
- Marketing Mix - Your marketing mix is like the "ingredients" or the tactics that are part of your marketing plan. What makes marketing so interesting, is that there is no "right answer". Every company and brand chooses what they think will work best to reach their target audience(s).
Successful small businesses want what big companies have: marketing experts who find and filter the best actionable information on marketing costs, suppliers and how to do marketing better, faster and less expensively.
Successful small businesses want what big companies have: marketing experts who find and filter the best actionable information on marketing costs, suppliers and how to do marketing better, faster and less expensively.
Copyright © 2009 - 2011 by MarketingZone™ Inc. All rights reserved.
No part of this work, including design, content, and underlying technology on all pages, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, screen capture, and recording or by an information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations referenced with full attribution. Pages may be printed for the sole use of the person printing them. MarketingZone content is available via content license. Address inquiries to licensing@marketingzone.com.
MarketingZone™ is a trademark of MarketingZone, Inc.
Comment on This Article