18 Step Small Business Marketing Plan That Actually Works

Do you have a marketing plan in place for your small business? More often than not business owners start a new business but don’t have any kind of plan in place of how to market. They simply talk to a few friends and hope for the best, or immediately jump into paid advertising without laying the proper foundation of their online presence. In this post, you’ll learn a simple 18 step small business marketing plan that can take your small business to a big business sooner than you might think.

1. Determine your unique selling proposition

Have you determined what makes your business special or different than the competition? Most people hear things like a unique selling proposition and start listing features of their products.

Certainly, your unique product features are important, but in many cases, your unique selling proposition may be something intangible as well. To determine your unique selling proposition start thinking about what you do better than everyone else.

Do you provide fast service? Are your quality standards much higher than your competition? Do you offer overnight delivery? Do you have a lifetime guarantee? Once you have determined what your unique selling proposition is you need to talk about it frequently.

Beyond just highlighting your unique selling proposition, you also need to position it properly. This means that you need to highlight not only your US but also share why it matters to your customers.

2. Make your sales messaging about benefits to the customer

Another common mistake small business owners make is that they only highlight the features of their products and services on their sales messaging and websites. As mentioned above your features might be what make you unique in the market, but you need to explain the benefits behind the features and what’s in it for your customers.

People buy on benefits, not on features. This is why it is so important to highlight benefits when advertising your small business. To most potential customers your business will look the exact same as the competition if you only talk about features.

For example, if you are a real estate agent, and you sell homes, most customers understand the basics of what realtors do. Simply listing that you sell homes, or that you have been in business for x number of years, or that you have sold x number of properties is great, but how does that matter to your customers?

Instead, frame it in a way that your years of experience mean you can help clients avoid buying homes that are overpriced. The fact that you have sold so many homes means that you can help clients get the highest offers that close quickly. You could highlight what kind of homes you specialize in buying or selling and how that specialization can help your client get better deals on negotiation.

Listing your features is a start, but promoting the benefits behind your features is far more effective for getting new customers and clients.

3. Know your industry, niche, and ideal customer avatar

Another key element to your small business marketing plan is to really know your industry and who your ideal customers are. This means you need to know their needs, their desires, their problems, and how to provide solutions to them.

Most small businesses make the mistake of trying to market to everyone and anyone.

When you market to everyone, you really market to no one. Share on X

Instead of trying to push your small business on everyone that breaths focus in on people who fit the profile of your ideal customer. One of the best ways to market your small business is by talking about your ideal customer’s major problems and then sharing how your product or service is the solution to that problem.

If you don’t know who your ideal customer is or what their problems are, you should start by creating an ideal customer avatar. This is a general idea around who you think would benefit more from your services.

For example, if your ideal customer is first time home buyers, you might start with demographics of who usually fits that type of customer. So maybe someone in their mid-20s to mid-30s has x amount of yearly income, has rented for so many years, has a high enough credit rating, etc.

If you are having a hard time with this start with your existing customers and try and find commonalities and start with those as the basis of your customer avatar. You’ll use this avatar as the person you are speaking to in your content and advertising further on in your small business marketing plan.

4. Include networking in your small business marketing plan

Most of the strategies we’ll cover in this post are related to digital marketing, but you can incorporate the strategy of networking both offline and online. In most cases, people think of networking as an offline activity, but you can perform the same activities online almost even more efficiently.

Offline networking has the benefit of typically building relationships faster, but it is also very time extensive. The beauty of networking online is that you aren’t limited by typical time and location constraints like you are networking in person. It takes a few seconds to make a connection request on social media, and you could do this during non-peak income-producing hours.

Another great thing about networking online is that you can build your network in a targeted fashion. Unlike with traditional networking, which may or may not lead to the right connections, you can specify where you choose to network with people.

For example, one of my favorite networking strategies is networking in Facebook groups. There are thousands of groups and most likely there are groups that will have a large percentage of people who meet your ideal customer avatar profile.

Check out the video below that walks you through how to network and find customers in your niche with Facebook groups.

5. Develop and optimize an active prospecting and sales strategy in your small business marketing plan

Using digital marketing to grow your business is one of the best strategies to implement, but many people neglect a prospecting and sales strategy to go with it. Most of the marketing strategies in your small business marketing plan are aimed at passive lead generation to attract your ideal customers.

In addition to a passive marketing strategy, you need an active prospecting and sales strategy to generate leads and sales quickly. Most small business owners neglect this part of their business or try and transition solely to passive marketing too soon.

Passive marketing is great and can eventually replace your active sales strategy, but abandoning active prospecting too soon can limit your growth. The first step of your active prospecting strategy is to find a pool of ideal customers to fish in. You can accomplish this by using the Facebook group strategy and networking talked about above.

You can also do this by actively connecting with prospects on social media that meet your criteria of an ideal customer. A great way to do this is by finding an influencer in your niche that would likely have a following that resembles your ideal customer avatar. This is why knowing your niche and ideal customer is so important as a foundation because it will make it that much easier to find where they hang out and influencers they would be likely to follow.

If you aren’t sure where to start, think about what kind of problems your ideal customers have that you solve. Next search on social media for another influencer or business that solves those same problems. Then start to connect with those people.

I break down the process I use for sales and recruiting and the exact scripts of what to say and what not to say to your prospects in my FORM Recruiting Machine Blueprint course.

6. Email marketing essential to your small business marketing plan

If you want to tap into the full power of passive marketing and lead generation in your small business you need to use email marketing. Email marketing is a great way to build leverage into your marketing and to help you convert leads into sales on autopilot.

In order to implement an email marketing strategy, you need to first have an email autoresponder like Aweber. With an email autoresponder, you are able to create signup forms for your newsletter and give away a lead magnet to generate leads for your business.

You can also create an email series that is designed to educate and sell potential customers on your products and services. This is one of the most powerful marketing strategies that all of the top digital marketing agencies use. Email marketing should be a part of your small business marketing plan because it helps you to build a list of targeted leads that you own.

Email open rates might not be what they used to be, but it is still a highly effective way to reach your potential customers. With the small time it takes you to write a quick email, you can reach thousands of people if not tens of thousands. Success in business and sales is a numbers game and even if only a fraction of your list takes advantage of your offer you likely made a few sales in the short time it took to send and write your email.

You can also automate this sales process with an email series and email autoresponder. Check out the video below on creating this passive income business model in your small business marketing plan.

7. Build a lead magnet

Now that you understand the power of email marketing, the next step of building your list starts with creating your lead magnet. In step 3 of your small business marketing plan, you should have done research on your ideal customer and found out some of their problems, needs, and desires.

With this information in hand, you should be able to create some kind of lead magnet that will help with those issues. For example, you could create an ebook that helps your ideal customer with one of their biggest problems and then give it away in exchange for their name, email, and phone number. Check out the video below to learn how to quickly create an ebook for your lead magnet using free marketing tools!

Example of a lead magnet to use for your small business marketing plan

Let’s say you had a roofing company as a small business. You could give away an ebook that is something like the Top 10 DIY Roof Maintainance Tips To have Your Roof Last 5 Years Longer. Now one of your tips could be to get your roof regularly inspected by a roofing professional every 5 years or something similar. Then you could offer a free inspection as the call to action knowing that a high percentage of people getting an inspection often buy a new roof with your company.

The idea is to help solve a major problem or reach a desire faster through the information your lead magnet provides. It should then be a stepping stone to sell your services or the next step in your sales process. You should do this through educational selling, so you are educating your customers on the benefits of your services and use a soft call to actions that sell your services without being pushy.

Something like “P.S. Worried about the integrity of your roof or are you due for your regular roof inspection? We are currently providing a free roof inspection to our new subscribers so call us at 111-222-3333 to schedule your free roof inspection today!” This simple process works wonders to generate quality leads and help to grow your small business on autopilot.

8. Optimize your website for lead generation

Now that you have an email autoresponder set up and a lead magnet created, the next step of your small business marketing plan is to optimize your site for lead generation. One of the great things about digital marketing is that you can use it to grow your small business on autopilot.

However, to do that just having a website isn’t enough. You need to optimize your site in a specific manner to make it so your website generates high-quality leads. The first step of this optimization process is to optimize your home page.

Your home page should include a header image or banner than includes your tagline. A tagline is a simple statement that shares who you are, and how you help people. For example, I help business owners grow their businesses with paid ads, automation, and digital marketing.

You want to frame this tagline in a way that is simple to understand but clear on the benefits of how you help your ideal customer. When people visit your site for the first time you want them to quickly know if they are in the right place to find the information they seek.

Your home page should also include a simple process you take clients through to achieve results and a call to action to get started with your business.

Another thing you should include is reviews or testimonials for your small business. This can help sell your services with social proof and lets a 3rd party talk about how great your business is vs only you talking about it.

Finally, be sure to include some kind of opt-in form where people can become leads and download your lead magnet. Check out the video below to see how to set this up with Aweber.

9. Create a follow-up process and use a CRM

The fortune is in the follow-up Share on X

One area I see small business owners often lack in their small business marketing plan is an outlined follow up process. If you optimize your website and follow the other steps in this plan you will begin to generate highly targeted traffic and leads. Unfortunately, if you don’t have an effective follow-up process you won’t ever convert any of these leads into sales.

You need to combine lead generation with proper follow up to create results in your small business. One marketing tool that can greatly help improve your follow-up process is a customer relationship manager or CRM.

A CRM is a marketing tool that will track all of your leads that you generate. It gives you a place to take notes about your prospects and you can set reminders to reach out and follow up. Many people will not automatically buy your services just by becoming a lead. Often they will need a little encouragement and salesmanship from your end to sell them on the benefits of working with your small business.

Unfortunately, many small businesses either never follow up at all with leads, or they do once and never reach out again. In today’s highly competitive marketplace you can’t afford to only follow up once as many of your leads will end up doing business with the competition instead. Develop a follow-up process for your small business marketing plan that doesn’t leave your leads hanging and that can continue the relationship and sales process after you generate the lead.

10. Use positive reviews and testimonials in your small business marketing plan

It was mentioned above but highlighting reviews and testimonials on your website can greatly help improve your conversion rate on your website. They should be highlighted on your homepage but also used throughout all of your marketing.

Obviously, you want to be passionate about your small business and the services you offer and have a high impression of your business. Saying great things about the quality of your products or services is important, but it can have a limited impact on whether your potential clients buy from you or not.

One way to increase sales for your small business is with testimonials. People are far more likely to believe a customer that talks highly of your business vs you talking highly of your business. People understand that the business has the incentive to make money, and customers don’t usually care if people buy from your business or not. The only time they do is if they are overly happy with your business or highly disappointed with your business.

Featuring the highly positive reviews on your site and in your marketing can help people make their buying decision easier. Another great reason to use testimonials and reviews in your marketing is that it can help more potential customers relate with your existing customer’s reasons for buying from you.

Facts tell, but stories sell. Share on X

Listing all of the features of your business is great, but a story of a happy customer and how your business helped them will do a much better job selling your business than a list of features. You can even use reviews and testimonials in your advertising strategy to increase conversions for leads and sales for your business.

11. Develop a content marketing and blogging strategy that provides value

One of the best ways to attract your ideal customers to your small business is with content marketing and blogging. Most people try and go right for the sale in a new interaction with potential customers but the reality is most people aren’t ready to buy right away.

For the most part, the average person that is interested in services like your small business offers is in research mode or comparison mode, and not buying mode. Most people have a problem that they need help with but aren’t sure if your services will be the right solution or if your company is the right company to work with.

This is where your content marketing strategy will come into play as part of your small business marketing plan. With content marketing, you can build content like videos and blog posts that educate your ideal customers and position your business as an expert in the industry.

When your ideal customers are in research mode, and they find answers to their questions in content your company created, it builds a lot of trust and credibility for your company. Then when the timing is right to make a buying decision these people usually buy from you over competitors. We’ll discuss it more further on, but content marketing can also be used to optimize SEO on your website and help you attract more targeted traffic to your website.

Writing quality content is actually easier than you think. You should write conversationally and simply share information that can help provide value that your ideal customers would benefit from. Check out this post on how to write the perfect blog post quickly for more guidance on writing quality content.

12. Develop a video marketing strategy on Youtube

In addition to writing blog posts as a form of content marketing, you should also use video marketing in your small business marketing plan. Video marketing is a strategy you should implement as soon as you can in your business.

There are many benefits to video marketing and one is that video marketing is one of the best ways to build trust, credibility, and rapport quickly with your potential customers. Having a potential customer watch a video from your company is the next best thing to you being in person and explaining concepts to them. Another benefit is that you can create a video and it can work for your business 24/7.

Video marketing gives your small business a lot of leverage and when you host your videos on YouTube, you can capitalize on SEO as well. YouTube marketing can turn your video content into evergreen content. Evergreen content is content that continues to get traffic for years after it was created.

I look at each new piece of content like another billboard that advertises your small business on the side of the highway. You could create one piece of content and some people will see it, or you can keep putting out content regularly and eventually have hundreds of billboards advertising your business constantly.

A simple way to create video content is to do recap videos of the blog posts you write. This allows you to repurpose the same content without having to develop a completely different piece. People absorb and like to consume content in many ways, and by having blog content and video content you give your small business more chances to reach your ideal customers.

13. Optimize on-site SEO is a must-have in your small business marketing plan

For a lot of small businesses SEO can seem like a complete mystery. The reality is that with the right knowledge and tools optimizing the SEO on your website is easier than you think. For starters, check out the SEO Secrets infographic below for some basic tips to optimize your website.

SEO should be one foundation strategy in your small business marketing plan. This is because it can help you build a steady flow of ongoing targeted traffic. The other great thing with SEO is that you can create content that will passively work to grow your small business.

Some marketing strategies take ongoing effort and extra time that you may not have to put into your small business marketing. There are only so many hours in a day most of it should be spent on active prospecting in the beginning. However, you want some time dedicated to passive marketing that can work without your direct time investment every day.

One marketing tool I highly recommend using to optimize your SEO is the Yoast SEO plugin. With the free version of this plugin it can help you optimize the content you create to maximize your likelihood to show up in search engines for specific keywords you are targeting.

When your website is optimized with SEO in mind you’ll have a good chance of bringing your ideal customers to your site. If you’ve followed the above steps you’ll also have a good chance of converting some of those site visitors into leads for your business.

14. Optimize off-site SEO with a Google My Business page

If your small business does business in a local area or city optimizing your off-site SEO is very important. One of the best ways to do this is with a Google My Business page. Many small businesses don’t either don’t even have a Google My Business page or if they do, it isn’t optimized.

Having and optimizing a Google My Business page is an essential part of your small business marketing plan. To create a Google My Business page head to https://www.google.com/business. Google actually does a great job of walking you through the initial setup process, but there are a few things to make sure to do in order to optimize your page.

The first part is to choose the right category for your business. You should have one primary category that best suits your business and then you can add additional categories that may also fit. However, don’t add categories that aren’t relevant to your business or services.

The next part of optimization is to fill out all of the relevant information that you can. For example, you want to list your business hours, service areas, services you provide, upload photos, and make sure the address on your Google My Business page matches the one on your website.

Positive reviews are very important on your Google My Business page as well. The more positive reviews you have on your Google My Business page, the more likely your page will rank well in local search. This means that when people search for the services you offer, it is likely that you can show up higher on Google Maps and in search.

15. Build a social media following and promote your content

At this point, your small business marketing plan is really starting to take shape. You have almost everything to grow your business to the next level. By now you should have started to create content on your site. This will help you grow with SEO, but you also want to promote your content on social media.

We talked about networking earlier as a part of your small business marketing plan and building your audience on social media is a part of networking. This step is actually easier than you might realize. On most social media platforms there is a search feature and you can search for people based on specific keywords related to your business.

On LinkedIn for example, you might want to connect with people who work in specific careers as they often can benefit from your services. All you need to do is search for that job title and then filter by people and you can find highly relevant people to connect with that likely are in that job position. The same kind of concept applies to other social media platforms as well.

3 steps to building your social media following

There are 3 steps to growing your small business with social media. They are building an audience, engaging your audience, and selling to that audience. Unfortunately, most small business owners skip engaging and even building an audience and skip right to selling. Selling is an important step, but likely you’ll never reach that point of converting followers into sales if you don’t build a large audience and create engaging content first.

To build your audience you need to consistently connect with people who fit the criteria of your ideal customers. As you do this a percentage of these people will connect back with you. As this audience grows you have many targeted prospects to reach out to and that will see the content you post.

Posting your relevant content on these platforms can help you to attract these followers to your website and if they are a good fit many will become leads for your business as well. This is engaging your audience.

You can sell to your audience through active prospecting your followers list, and by reaching out to the leads you generate from your content engagement. Growing a social media following can also help you to improve your online reputation.

For example, most people see a business that has a lot of followers as a more reputable business. People are also more likely to heed your advice. Making videos on YouTube is another place that can help you establish a positive reputation.

16. Provide great service and maintain your online reputation

Now maintaining a good reputation by providing good service is something that is essential to your small business marketing plan. If you don’t provide quality service you will likely lose the business you do get rather quickly. In today’s age, negative word of mouth can spread in an instant.

One way to help maintain your online reputation is with a Google My Business page. As you optimize your page you want to try and get as many quality reviews as you can. Gathering more reviews will help boost your perception in the marketplace.

If you have hundreds of videos providing value and serving your target market, it’s hard not to like your business. Even if you have some negative feedback, if the majority of your reputation is positive it can drown out the negative.

Another key way to help maintain your online reputation is by responding appropriately to negative feedback. It’s only a matter of time, but eventually, someone is going to leave a negative review about your business. The goal is not to try and burry this review, but rather to respond in a way that builds your company’s authority and credibility. You can do this by responding quickly and offering a solution to whatever the issue may be.

Avoid becoming defensive and simply say you understand their issues. Also, include the steps you can take to fix it. Be agreeable and work towards a win-win situation for both parties. How you respond to negativity can help establish a positive reputation for your business. Usually, your response to the negativity is more important than the negative review.

17. Create an affiliate or incentive program for referrals

Another aspect you want to include in your small business marketing plan is a plan to get referrals. There are several ways to do this but some popular ways are to create an incentive program. Another option of referral programs is creating an affiliate marketing program.

An affiliate marketing program gives affiliates of your company resources like landing pages, and sales materials, email swipe files. These tools can help them to sell your products and services. Each sale that an affiliate makes will earn them a commission and will incentivize them to promote your business.

An affiliate program is a bit harder to set up. Despite the difficulty, an affiliate program could be a great addition to help increase sales.

Start with a simple referral program in your small business marketing plan

The easier method is going to be to create an incentive program vs an affiliate program. For that reason, likely an incentive program is the first place you start. Some of your best salespeople are actually going to be your happy customers rather than someone you hire. The key is to create a reason for these happy customers to sell for you.

You do that with an incentive program for referrals. One way to do this is by offering something in exchange for their referrals that they actually want. Also, make sure your offer doesn’t eat into your profits too much. What you offer will completely depend on the type of business you have.

Service businesses are great to offer referral programs. This is especially true if your service is something that occurs regularly or that is a high-ticket service.

One common type of referral bonus is something like a discounted or free service. Another option is paying out a percentage of a referral of a new customer if you are selling high-ticket offers.

For example, if you sold new roof installations or kitchen remodels those are expensive offers. In cases like that, paying a percentage of a completed job could be a worthwhile incentive. If you sell smaller ticket services you might consider things like free gift cards or free products that you sell.

18. Scale your business with paid advertising as the final step in your small business marketing plan

The final step of your small business marketing plan should include scaling your business with paid advertising. Depending on your budget and target market this could include Facebook advertising and/or Google Ads.

Most small businesses jump into paid advertising too soon. Without the earlier steps of this small business marketing plan in place first, it can negatively impact your results from advertising.

Imagine running advertising to a restaurant that people couldn’t eat at.  Or running ads telling people to call your business but your phones weren’t hooked up. This is similar to running advertising for a business that doesn’t have an optimized website. Getting more traffic to your website is useless if the other aspects of your marketing strategy aren’t optimized.

Another reason you should run paid advertising last is that paid advertising has its own learning curve and optimization timeframe. Paid advertising can get you targeted traffic quicker than organic strategies. However, if you don’t know what you are doing you can end up wasting a lot of money. Running paid ads for your small business with trial and error will quickly eat into your profits.

If your business isn’t already running profitably before jumping into advertising you can go through your remaining profits quickly. It’s good to have a buffer and marketing strategy that is converting organically before jumping into paid ads. If you would like to learn more about our done for you marketing services check out our digital marketing packages.

Conclusion

While this small business marketing plan doesn’t guarantee success overnight, it does work when applied consistently in your small business. Start with a foundation of learning all you can about your ideal customers and what they need and want.

From here you want to optimize your website with messaging that highlights the benefits your ideal customers will receive. This can help them decide to work with your company over competitors. Create offers and lead magnets that will solve your ideal customer’s biggest problems. Doing so will help you generate targeted leads for your small business.

Create ongoing content and build an email series that can help you convert your leads through educational selling. Focus on building an SEO optimized strategy that can help you build authority in the search engines. As an added bonus, it will help you attract your ideal customers to your website.

Focus on maintaining a positive reputation and ask your clients and customers for reviews and referrals. Once your foundation marketing strategies are in place and you are generating sales, scale up your business with paid advertising. Follow this small business marketing plan and you can get your new small business into profits. It can even help you get past a plateau and take your business to the next level.

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Mike MacDonald

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P.S. If you don’t have a systematic approach to lead generation, aren’t getting daily leads, or could use more sales in your business, check out this free lead generation training. 

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