Developing Your Small Business Marketing Plan

At last, you are ready to produce your detailed marketing action plan. You may like to review the principles of an effective marketing mix before proceeding.

On this page I have listed some of the actions you might adopt to fulfil the elements of your marketing strategy.

You will have noticed that I used that word SMART again. Every action is your detailed marketing action plan should be SMART. So, just one more time, SMART means - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time bound.

Fill Your Sales Pipeline

• Produce compelling descriptions of products and services.
• Clearly define target market space
• Produce your 15s, 30s and one minute pitch based on your USP.
• Develop your prospect list.
• Identify appropriate business network clubs and events
• Put attendance at networking events in the diary.
• Identify possible referral partners.
• Identify public speaking events, topics and opportunities.
• Contact organisers to offer your public speaking pitch.
• Identify opportunities and topics for articles.
• Send articles for publication.
• Decide suitable subjects for press releases.
• Attend trade shows.
• Develop web site. Ensure the web site is written to sell.
• Advertising opportunities?

Effective Follow-Up

• Brochures
• Leave behinds (FREE reports, models, newsletters etc.)
• Infomation sources (FREE reports, models, newsletters etc.)
• Personalised follow-up letters
• Contact management system
• Email
• Telephone (Telemarketing)

The secret of successful follow up is persistence. Research from Bane and Co showed that over 80% of salespeople never contacted their prospects more than 3 times. The same research showed that 84% of prospects only decided to buy after 4 or more contacts with a sales person.

The lesson is obvious. If you want more sales plan for and be diligent in your follow-up.

Get the Presentation

Follow up is vitally important. But never forget, the purpose of following up is to get a sale. First step in getting the sale is getting the chance to make your presentation.

Specific actions to increase the chance of getting the presentation include:

• Monitoring all follow-up contact responses.
• Regularly review and adjust follow-up materials.
• Develop strong, benefit driven telemarketing scripts.
• Assess in-house telemarketing skills - outsource if necessary.
• Monitor and review your offer and guarantees.
• Use pre-qualifying questionnaires.
• Concentrate your efforts on your best prospects.
• Monitor and review your target market.
• Ask for feedback