Building Better Marketing Plans (Part One)

Time to build this year's marketing plan? If you’re tempted to pull out last year’s budget and just update the numbers – stop. Even if your marketing is working, there’s always room for improvement.

Here are three best-practices that everybody knows – but not everybody uses – for building a better marketing plan.

Crunch the numbers

Query your database for information about your customers, sales, leads, and lead sources. Where did leads come from? Who signed contracts this year? What was the average sale? Who bought the most? Which neighborhoods had the highest closing rates? Study your data like a detective until you start to see patterns.

EXAMPLE: A Bungalo Client recently discovered that although they had a high volume of internet leads, the average project size was small and a very low percentage of these leads turned into revenue. Instead of spending more money on PPC campaigns to attract leads, they redesigned the website. A more sophisticated interface helped bargain-hunting buyers understand that the company was not a low-cost provider. The design helped "pre-qualify" buyers. This improved the quality of the leads and ultimately the marketing ROI.

Know your WHO

Identify the market segments that fit your product or service best and stick to your guns. Resist the temptation to market to the masses. Even if it’s true that your product or service appeals to a broad spectrum of buyers – that doesn’t mean you can afford to market your services successfully to a large pool of buyers. Target marketing is as important – or even more important – to small companies as it is to the big ones. To keep your marketing plan focused, and boost your ROI, include a written description or profile of your WHO (your target buyer) in your marketing plan. The more detail, the better. And make sure everyone in your company knows who your WHO is.

EXAMPLE: A participant in Bungalo Business Builders created two detailed profiles of their target buyer. The sales and marketing team uses the profile to improve their results. The website, collateral and messaging is purposefully designed and written to appeal to the tastes, attitudes and values of their WHO. When someone who fits the profile calls the sales team “turns it up” and makes sure they get the attention they deserve. As a result, closing rates have improved significantly – because the company is focused on attracting and closing the “right” buyers.

Start with a Strategy

If you want to squeeze more out of your marketing budget, you need a rock-solid strategy. A strategy is basically the primary WAY you will create customers. You might have a referral strategy, a promotion strategy, a networking strategy, an inbound marketing strategy, a sampling strategy, a partnering strategy, a public relations strategy – but it you have too many strategies in play, you probably won’t have enough time and money to execute any of them well.

EXAMPLE: Recently we worked with a remodeling company that was spending dollars on many different marketing tactics. A little here, a little there. Looking at the data, it was obvious that the best opportunities were coming from past clients and referrals. A new marketing plan started with a simple strategy: Market to the base. This made deciding where and how to deploy dollars and time much simpler, and more cost-effective.

Is business picking up? Great! Are you wondering what you should do to take your business to the next level? Bungalo can help.

Sign up for Growth Zone Essentials. Develop detailed Growth Zone plans and specs to help you achieve your growth goals.

Talk to us about our Virtual VP services. A Bungalo Virtual VP will give you the guidance you need to make better decisions and keep your plans on-track. It’s a service created specifically for small companies that need “just a little” high-level finance, marketing or new business development expertise in order to improve performance and results.