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Is it the death of the marketing plan?

Written by: Bonnie Harris

Article Overview: I don’t know about you, but I rarely come across small businesses that have a concrete marketing plan in place. For that matter, I don’t know many medium sized ones that follow theirs to the letter either.

Is it the death of the marketing plan?

I don’t know about you, but I rarely come across small businesses that have a concrete marketing plan in place. For that matter, I don’t know many medium sized ones that follow theirs to the letter either. Usually, it’s one of those things where people know they “need” one, but don’t have the time. Or they pay someone else to write it and end up getting back a cleverly worded regurgitation of what they already know. And still the question remains….what do I do to market my business?

It used to be easier. Car dealers knew that TV and newspaper ads worked. Grocery stores placed full page coupons in the local paper. But there are too many messaging channels today for those old-fashioned approaches to work. (Or at least to work on their own without supporting tactics like public relations or internet.) And so we constantly search for the next ONE thing that will work to bring in more business. And we often do that without a plan, and without a strong notion of where to find our customers and sell to them.

These days by the time it’s written a formal marketing plan will be out of date. It seems like by the time we figure out what to do, our competitor has already beat us to it, or done us one better. Or perhaps we have a fine tuned marketing plan that makes a lot of sense, written by a smart consultant who really knows our business. How often do we actually use it?

I think we need to consider marketing as though it were an economics problem. In economics, data is sliced and diced many different ways, but the primary divider is macro and micro. In other words, one is a 10,000 foot level and the other is the “lift the hood check out the date on the valve” level.

Once a quarter, look at your marketing as it ties into your business from a macro level. For example, ask yourself if the combination of marketing tactics you’re using are bringing in more business overall. Is any one tactic working better than others? Are you measuring results against realistic objectives? (Realistic objectives break down the steps leading to the all-hallowed “more revenue.) Every three months give your marketing efforts a report card, adjust and move forward with confidence. That’s macro marketing.

Micro marketing looks at it from the bottom up. Take suggested tactics – and these could be ones that are working for a competitor, ones you’ve read about, or anything – and test them. NOT with “did they bring in more business” but with realistic measurements. For example, if it’s an online campaign, measure the conversion to your website. If it’s an ad, measure the hits on your website or the volume of calls. Better yet, measure your salesperson’s conversions…are they getting better response to their cold calls? Have customers heard of them when they call, when they hadn’t before? Come up with the measurements that lead to more business.

Micro marketing is about breaking it down…figuring out all the steps that lead up to more business. You need to know how to measure if each marketing technique to taking you further down the road. Because today, it’s not one technique that’s going to work. It’s the synergy of those tactics that brings in more business. And you can review that by looking at it from a macro level, on a regular basis. I recommend 90 days or so.

Forget about a marketing plan. Think like Alan Greenspan and take a look at your own little “economy” from a macro perspective regularly. And micro adjustments? I’m sorry, but today the guys getting it done are doing this constantly, weekly if not daily. Figure out how to make marketing a priority. You can’t afford not to.

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Article Tags: marketing plan, small business marketing



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Contest - I really like Kai's suggestion on this one. And as you said, Evan, I feel a marketing/business competition would be much more beneficial than a SEO contest. SEO is extremely important, obviously, but it's something that can be outsourced to specialized SEO companies when starting a business. This isn't something extremely crucial that needs to be learned by an entrepreneur. However, writing a marketing/business plan is much more valuable in regards to learning. I'm sure that we can come up with a fair way to judge this type of competition. Unfortunately, only about, what, 5 people have respsonded to this thread, so it's rather difficult to get a feel for how everyone feels on this idea. Like Kai said, the business plan competition can be graded and evaluated just like it is in entrepreneurship colleges and classes; it is graded upon the viability of the idea, and more importantly, the depth and presentation of the actual plan. The judges can be made up by a select panel, or the community as a whole. Crap - I better get back to paying attention in class. Apparently the professor is calling on students to answer questions, and I'm not going to lie, I don't have a clue what is going on [except for the fact that the guy sitting besides me needs to brush his teeth]. Daggone entreneurship website! -Brandon
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