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A quick and effective way to get more out of your marketing. Planning isn't everyone's favourite task, but it is proven to help you to get to where you want to go.

In this guide, we try to ease your marketing planning pain. We look at why your business needs a marketing plan, share our one page marketing plan template with you and give you guidance on how to complete it.

Let's get started.

How can a marketing plan help my business?

If your business is small to medium sized you may share marketing tasks between a few colleagues and wonder why you need a marketing plan at all.

You might exhibit at an industry event or publish the occasional press release. You might also be on Twitter or send out a newsletter to your customers every once in a while.

When you fit marketing in where you can and turn the taps on and off as needed then your approach becomes piecemeal.

What's wrong with that? It's simply that you're reacting to immediate needs and ideas without relating them back to what your trying to achieve.

So, you might not be spending your time and effort in the areas that would really make a difference and you’re probably not maintaining a steady flow of leads.

Plus, without a strategic approach, your marketing will probably fail to create a consistent experience for your customers and prospects. It's this consistency that positions you as the right choice and keeps customers engaged.

This is where the value of a good marketing plan lies.

How to write your marketing plan on just one page.

Marketing isn't something you can switch on and off easily.

Consider your website - it's always on.

If your news page hasn't been updated in a few months it impacts on your credibility. Visitors may wonder if your business is as active as your competitors and even if you're still operating. The same goes for your social media and your newsletters.

Please don't go quiet on your customers!

How do I write a marketing plan?

There are lots of marketing templates on the internet. Some are full and in-depth and some offer a leaner approach, like our one page marketing plan.

One thing is certain. Your business and the environment you're operating in will change over time so your plan needs to be detailed enough for you and your team to be clear on what you're trying to achieve while offering flexibility for further down the line.

For a smaller business or a start-up, the one page marketing plan is enough to get you going. You can always supplement this with campaign plans and in-depth analysis but the first thing to do is get started.

Your marketing plan should follow on from your business plan to ensure you can tie the objectives back and that you know what success looks like.

How can a one page marketing plan help?

This one page marketing plan template will help you get the basics of your plan ironed out.

Use the template to document the whats and whys and as a tool to communicate these with your team. It even might be something that you do together. Try printing it out on A3 paper and sticking it on the office wall.

The one page marketing plan may help you to identify a new unique selling point, understand your customers in a new way, stop spending money on marketing activities that aren't delivering, and help you to identify new ways to market your business.

It will certainly help you to make more informed decisions about those last-minute advertising opportunities that come your way.

You'll be able to scope out your marketing in just one page.

It still requires quite a bit of brain power so don't be fooled by its size. But, it will be worth the effort as you quickly see what types of marketing activity will deliver for you, and which ones won't.

How to use the one page marketing plan.

The one page marketing plan template is designed with customers at the centre. This is intentional. If your customers are at the heart of your business then everything else will follow.

Under here are your tactics because these are informed by your customers and your business. The information on your business is in the far left and right columns.

Start at the top left of the plan - Your business.

Situation This section is about where your business is today.

What your business is and how it is performing. What's happening in terms of politics, the economy, in the social sphere and what technology changes and trends impact on your business.

Purpose Think about why your business exists. Go beyond the fact it is there to be profitable. There comes a point where this isn't enough and having a broader purpose helps to motivate you and your team through the highs and lows.

For example, Ikea's purpose is: 'To create a better everyday life.'

Objectives Where do you want to be? What is your business trying to achieve? Try to articulate these into SMART objectives as this is the best way for you come back in a few months’ time and really know if you're achieving what you set out to.

Strategy Now you have a clear understanding of where you are, where you want to be and how you'll know you've reached there, it's time to think about how. You might want to come back to this section after you've thought more about your business (right hand column) and your customers.

Move to the far right of the plan - Your business

Products and services What do you offer? Do you provide widgets or support services? How are these packaged - as a buy as you need or a subscription service? Are your products and services tiered or modular?

Top 3 competitors You can spend all day looking at your competitors. For now, just look at your top three. The first step is to identify these particularly key competitors and you might later choose to do an in-depth competitor bench marking exercise.

Positioning Where do you sit in the market in terms of the value you bring, your price point, branding, ethics, and anything else that makes you different? How do you talk to customers and prospects about your proposition?

Reputation How do your customers and prospects see your business? Where do they see your strengths

and weaknesses? Customer insight initiatives such as surveys and review meetings and focus groups can help you to discover new unique selling points and strengthen your offering.

Unique selling point What makes you different? Do you provide a higher level of service than your competitors, or a lower price? Are you simply easy to do business with?

It's worth spending some time working out what it is that makes you different and weaving this into your marketing communications so that everyone else knows why you're different too.

Your customers

Next to consider are your customers. This is a vital part of your one page marketing plan and is something that is often missed.

Put a picture of your ideal customer in the middle of your plan to help you to stay focused. This may be a real customer. Visualising your customer helps anyone working on your marketing (or your business processes) to create work with a specific person in mind, making your marketing more effective.

Ideal customer This first section is about the ideal business you would like to work with. This is with B2B organisations in mind. What industry do they work in? What's their turnover? How many employees do they have? Where are they based? How often do they buy?

Buyers and influencers In B2B there's usually a decision maker who is surrounded by influencers - those who will be affected by the buying decision. What job titles are these, what challenges do they face, what motivates them, and how do they buy? Also think about their personal traits as we are working with people at the end of the day. Do they tend to me male or female, what life stage do they tend to be at, and what age do they tend to be?

Channels Where do your buyers and influencers spend time? Are they on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter? Which industry events do they attend, do they sit at a desk with ready access to email and your website, which industry press to they read and do they take part in online industry forums?

Remember this is about where they are as a person, not just in their professional role. Answers to this type of question is often what drives businesses to take a box at prestigious sports events.

One tip is: It's a lot easier to be where your customers are than to take them somewhere new.

Tactics Using the information you have about your customers and what your business is working towards complete the 'strategy' section in the bottom left corner then filter this down into your tactics.

Channels You know where your customers are. You know where your business is or can be present. Where do these overlap? This is an easy way to choose your marketing channels.

Your channels might include, Twitter, email newsletters, website, specific industry events and so on.

Message Now you know where you're going to be, what will you say? List your key prospect messages, based on what motivates them and your offering. Remember to work in your unique selling points.

You might want to break down your target market into groups - current customers, past customers, prospects by size, location, industry and so on. Developing specific messaging for each of these groups will make your marketing communications more relevant and more effective.

Results Think about what success looks like to you. There are lots of ways to break this down throughout the buyer journey and to get you started you might want to think in terms of website visitors, email click-throughs, enquiries, social media interactions and sales.

Every business is different so it's a matter of understanding your base line then working to improve.

Data Data is key to any marketing strategy. Think about what customer and prospect data you hold and how you might build on and use this. You might want to grow your email list or you might want to clean up any older data you hold.

Whatever your data approach is it needs to be GDPR compliant.

Resources If these were unlimited, who knows what we could achieve? We would probably become very annoying very quickly by being everywhere!

Any marketing plan needs to be realistic. Think about what investment you're looking to make in your marketing in terms of budget, time and skills. What can you do within your team and what will you need help with? This will help you to scale your plan accordingly.

Time to get started!

Now you that you have a clearer idea of why you need a marketing plan and how to get started with our one page version, why not get started with the one page marketing plan template over on the next page?

If you have any questions about the plan be sure to call us on 01254 457016 or email info@salt-marketing.co.uk and we'll have happy to help.

YOUR BUSINESS YOUR BUSINESS SITUATION PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

YOUR CUSTOMERS IDEAL CUSTOMER BUYERS AND INFLUENCERS TOP 3 COMPETITORS PURPOSE CHANNELS POSITIONING OBJECTIVES TACTICS CHANNELS MESSAGE RESULTS REPUTATION STRATEGY UNIQUE SELLING POINT DATA RESOURCES

SALT MARKETING ONE PAGE MARKETING PLAN

Replace with your customer

Natalie is dedicated to ensuring that

communications meet the needs of

customers and the business.

- Mark Goble, Head of Product Management, Cegedim Rx

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Natalie

Burtonwood-Wilson,

Founder,

Salt Marketing

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Find out more at salt-marketing.co.uk