Category: Feature Post

Good and efficient marketing can make or break a business venture. Whether it is through branding, marketing campaigns, or social media, a successful marketing initiative will benefit a company’s bottom line significantly. 

When it comes to startup businesses and small business owners seeking to expand their market share, smart planning can give you the edge you need over your competitors.

A decent product with good marketing will have a better chance of success than an excellent product with poor marketing. 

This article will cover the importance of planning and strategy prior to launching a new campaign for your small business.

For your marketing to be successful, it is vital that you do a few things properly right from the beginning of your business venture. Let’s us see some of those here,

Be clear on the type of Business you want to start

It is crucial to the success of the venture that the type of business you want to start matches your strength, passion, and experience. 

There are several ways you can try to start a business. It can be an e-commerce online store, a digital marketing agency, a consultancy firm, an affiliate marketing blog, a software start-up, etc. 

The opportunities are wide and endless. However, it is crucial to choose the right one for you that you would enjoy putting consistent work into. 

If you are good at writing, a blog makes perfect sense, if you have expertise in a very targeted niche a consultancy is a fantastic option, if you have many local businesses to serve in your locality a digital marketing agency might be a perfect choice. 

Do a self-study of yourself and pick the right business model that you can commit to.

Validate your Business Idea

An honest and proper validation of the business idea is something many entrepreneurs fail to do and pay the price for it later. 

Many new start-ups and small businesses also fail to identify the right problem they are trying to solve. 

Before starting a new venture, it is important that you understand your target audience. Understand who you want your product or service to appeal to and be designed for.

If it is a software product, do a pre-launch of the beta version and gauge market interest, and tweak the pricing to get it right. If you are launching an online course, collect feedback from your existing audience and make sure they will be willing to pay the price you demand that the quality of content you provide deserves.

In the case of a services or a consultancy firm, you can use the following points to validate the idea and improve it further by asking your initial clients or students, 

• What did they like or dislike about your services?
• What did they think about the approach you used to solve their problem?
• Did they have any suggestions for improving the quality of your service?
• Were they satisfied with the outcome of your service? If not, what is missing? Is there something that can be done to provide them with that solution?

If you are planning an e-commerce store, run a pre-launch at a heavily discounted price and get the below feedback as detailed as possible,

• How did they react to the quality of the product?
• Did they like it or not? Why? Would they recommend it to their friends and family?
• Did they find any flaws in the product before purchasing it? If so, what are they and how can they be fixed?
• Did they have any suggestions regarding the packaging and the delivery of the product?
• How are your customers using that particular product and how does it affect their lives in general? This is a simple way of getting customer feedback. It does not require any detailed research or huge efforts. 

Also, as a general thumb rule, run the below checklist while validating your business idea,

• There is enough demand in the market for the product or service at the price point you are planning,
• Competitors Analysis – There is enough room to grow the business even if the competition becomes bigger and fierce,
• Availability of sufficient marketing budget to reach the target audience either by advertising or content marketing,
• Availability of sufficient funds in case the revenue and profit targets are not met in the first one or two years of the business. 
• Ability to hire the right people when needed and the availability of a competent workforce in the market at the right price.

In addition to all of this, if you would like to further validate your big idea, we have created a free pdf questionnaire that you can use in your business!

Plan and write down a detailed path for 0 to 100K, 1M in Revenue. 

Generating revenue and profits are an integral part of starting a business venture. However, writing a detailed plan with the target revenue numbers is so vital as it makes it easier to determine how many milestones that you need to hit in specific periods in order to achieve the overall target. 

Having a detailed plan helps to execute the strategy and make sure you are on the right track. It also helps in self-motivation and keeping your morale up.

The early success of your business can easily boost your morale, which is crucial in tough times, but you need to see past that. A failed business venture can make you lose motivation and lose sight of the bigger picture. 

A detailed business plan will help you stay focused and stay motivated even through tough times.

The business plan should comprehensively cover the below five aspects of your business to achieve this revenue target,

• Your product or service,
• Market research and Competitor analysis,
• The audience that are potential customers of your product or service,
• The sales process that will be implemented to achieve the target revenue,
• After-sales customer service and how to implement it effectively.

So, once you have decided on the business type based on the market research, your product, and validated it, the next vital step is to come up with the marketing idea to promote it among your target audience. This is so crucial that it could make or break your venture.

The below factors will play a huge part in determining your marketing plan,

The size and type of your target audience

Based on your business type, your target audience will vastly differ. The audience for B2B business is completely different to a B2C business like e-commerce. 

In the case of B2B, the sales process might take longer compared to B2C as the average lifetime value of each customer is much higher. It is important to be patient and build your brand and trust in the customer’s mind and turn the awareness stage of the funnel to the purchase stage. 

If it is a B2C product or service, it can involve a lot of impulsive buying. Therefore, it is crucial that you do a thorough market research on the demographics, geographical location and also the buying behavior of your target audience. 

Your marketing plan will be a lot more effective if you understand how each segment behaves.

How a detailed marketing plan can help your business

Once you start your business, you will have to face lots of challenges which will be difficult to manage. Once you are in the midst of the struggle, without a clear marketing plan, it becomes hard to make the right decisions and make any adjustments. 

A well-written marketing plan will help you in determining how much resources should be spent on its development and what are the key areas that need to be attended to in order to make it successful.

The main reason why a proper marketing plan is important is because it helps to keep an eye on expenses and tracks progress of different tasks.

You must know where you are now, where you are going to and how you’ll get there. Think about the following points before writing your marketing plan. It’ll help to make more sense of your business and how it works:

• Where are you now?
• What do you need to reach that next level?
• Where does it take you? What’s the path from here to there?
• How will that affect what you do now and in the future?
• Why should an investor invest in your company or hire a worker and vice versa?. A clear view on this question will help at every stage of the planning process.

Tools you can use to Define and Execute your Marketing Plan

For your marketing plan to be effective in the longer run, it is imperative that you use the right tools for it. The initial marketing plan is not going to be perfect and you will have to adapt and tweak it over time. Hence, putting in the time and effort initially to decide on the right tools would definitely give you some leverage in your business later on.

You can ask your co-founders or team members to get together and discuss what each of you is capable of doing. Once you have put everyone’s expertise into account, you can decide on the marketing strategy and the mediums & tools to be used.

You will have to keep checking on the marketing plan once it is implemented as well. You need to make sure that it is achieving its defined goals and keep optimizing it for maximum effectiveness.

Let’s have a look at some of the tools that can be of help,

• MarketPlan

Regardless of the type of business you want to start, MarketPlan can help accomplish a variety of aspects in successfully detailing your marketing plan and implementing it. 

Below are just some of the things you can do with MarketPlan,

• Plan and map out your complete marketing and sales funnel with details on every traffic source, outreach & social media channels, 
• Collaborate with your team members in the mapping process via internal team chat,
• Forecasting the performance of your sales funnel with expected numbers,
• Track your marketing funnel with real-time data and numbers once it is live,
• Comparison of forecasted and real-time data to measure the effectiveness of your marketing & sales funnel to optimize it. 
• Plan all your blog posts, chatbot sequences, and email sequences right within MarketPlan.
• Manage all your projects with a built-in Kanban.
• Collaborate on image designs and videos.

The above features would cover all of your activities in your marketing plan and help you implement the plan in the most efficient manner. 

• Google’s Free Tools

There are so many free tools that Google provides you that helps you in each aspect of implementing your marketing plan. Let’s have a look at some of it,

• Google Analytics – The all-in-one analytics tool that helps you track all the key KPIs like, your traffic, the revenue generated by each of your sites and so on. You also get to see the visitor demographics such as the age group etc.
• Google Search Console – A tool that helps you in knowing how your site has been ranked and discovered on Google.
• Google Adwords – The native advertising platform of Google that you can use to advertise your product or service on the world’s biggest search engine,
• Google Trends – Helps you analyze the latest trends in your niche based on the searches made in Google. 

• Social Media Channels

There are a ton of social media channels to plan your marketing for every type of business. If you are planning a B2B business, LinkedIn can be the best channel while Instagram & Pinterest works the best for e-commerce businesses. 

Facebook and Twitter could work for both the business types with their wider range of audience and in turn their robust advertising as well. 

Conclusion

To wrap up, as discussed, a well-defined marketing map could be a huge asset when you launch your business idea. 

Are you ready with your next big business and marketing idea? Sign up for an account with MarketPlan today and start planning.

It is completely free, so you can see how well it works for your business. 

Anything from email newsletters to PPC campaigns will need a place in your marketing budget. As a marketing head, you need to ensure that your allocation for different expenses will match your campaign goals. After all, a successful marketing campaign is part of the core of what makes a thriving business. Before you can eat of the fruit of your team’s success, you need to know how to make a strategic marketing budget that answers your company’s brand recognition goals.

Breaking down your marketing budget

Setting your marketing budget will help you stay on track with your team’s limitations, including paying for the production of marketing collaterals and other logistical expenses. It also enables you to project long-term strategies and initiatives with the cost of these attempts in mind. This allows you to know the difference between extravagant and sustainable campaigns with a higher ROI.

Depending on your company’s size, industry, and revenue projections, your marketing budget will vary for every campaign. Additionally, you can expect your expected cost ceilings to increase during different times of the year. Generally, CMOs report that marketing efforts cost around 8% to 16% of your business’s total revenue.

If you want to plan an airtight marketing budget, we will share a three-step guide to help you break down what you need to prepare for your company’s next budget proposal meeting.

Step #1: Calculating your marketing budget

There’s no universal format when it comes to managing your marketing budget. However, there are methods that marketing teams use as a template when goal setting and negotiating for their allotment for financials. Here are four common budgeting methods that can help you visualize your future marketing expenses:

1. Percent of revenue model: The simplest method is calculating a fixed percent of your company budget to your marketing team. The percent of revenue model prevents overspending and reduces the need for substantial research for budget forecasting. However, the problem now comes with how much budget you should allot.

Thankfully, there’s a general margin you can follow to estimate for your budget allocation. Businesses between 1-5 years of operation should use 12%-20% of revenue for marketing expenses. In contrast, companies operating beyond 5 years should cut down on their marketing considerably to 6%-12% since you should already have a higher customer base for organic marketing.

2. Project budget model: Your company can treat marketing campaigns as an individual project under its financials. If you have several campaigns in mind, you may need to break them down and determine your department’s final budget.

This method will work best for marketing teams that have an idea of their project’s specifics for the year. By working with tangible numbers, it’s easier to forecast expenses per fiscal quarter. However, you shouldn’t limit your projects solely on these figures. It can be dangerous to have a tunnel vision on a budget and not on your operational upkeep.

Remember that employee advancement budgets, office equipment, marketing software, venue reservations, and outsourcing creatives can balloon beyond your budget if you don’t account for them. Before submitting your project proposals, make sure that you consider these factors and remember to add an allowance for additional expenses.

3. Top-down model: Some businesses appoint finance officers in senior management to hand down the amount through a top-down budget approach. This can be limiting for marketing managers, especially since they don’t have control over the campaign budget. Instead of waiting for your senior officers, you can be proactive by submitting a mock marketing budget for your team’s needs.

Creating a comprehensive presentation of your campaign’s benefits, ROI, requests, and projected results will help your chances of getting approval from your senior officers. Doing so will highlight your initiative as a team leader and give you a higher chance of getting a green light on your projected expenses.

Many businesses use a funnel mapping tool to help their team keep track of their projected expenses. However, it’s important to note that these models should only work as a guide for your actual budget allocation. Learn when to adjust your actual budget from your previous projections when necessary.

Step #2: List out your different marketing functions and other expenses

Allocating your budget will depend on your key marketing functions. The larger the department you have, the more divisions you may need to appoint. Before you start prioritizing which team should have a larger cut over the other, you should first list out what you need to account for.

Branding and design, PR, and market research are the three core marketing functions that are important invest in. However, with more people moving online with their businesses, you may need to expand your marketing efforts. Digital marketing expenses can break down into different sectors, from content marketing to social media marketing. Additionally, you shouldn’t forget to include SEO in all your posts.

Besides these long-term functions, you should also consider if you will need to pay for your brand’s one-time expenses. You may need to allot some of your budget for logistical and design costs if you plan to have product launches and website redesigns.

Step #3: Allocate your funds to high ROI marketing channels

Spending money to make money is the core principle of marketing. As your brand’s recognition expands, higher sales figures should logically follow. However, not all businesses will receive the same amount of success in their marketing efforts. This is because their ROI doesn’t offer a positive net worth of revenue.

A growing business can use an attribution model to set the criteria for which marketing efforts generate the best leads. This is important for marketers to know if campaigns are effective. If you don’t have enough market research available, you should try emulating successful businesses in the same industry. Learn from your competitors’ marketing developments and try to avoid their mistakes.

You can start with a general allocation for as many marketing channels as possible. Although it can be tempting to put all your budget on one campaign strategy, it will be a substantial financial risk. Also, it results in fewer data to interpret for revising your future campaigns.

Through recommendations and input from customers and team collaborators, you can refine and adjust your budgeting to prioritize the channels and networks with the highest ROI. Simultaneously, you can reduce the financing or cancel altogether the sales funnel entryways that don’t offer a substantial growth to your customer conversion rates.

Conclusion

It’s your responsibility as a marketing team head to know the ins and outs of your company’s marketing plans. This includes your understanding of how budgeting can help you deliver the best results for your business’s success. With the help of reliable teammates and the right marketing budgeting software, your marketing campaign’s success is only a stone’s throw away.

The best way to ensure your marketing campaign’s efficiency and precision is to use the latest digital tools available. We provide comprehensive marketing collaboration tools to help your team execute a successful marketing campaign.

Sign up for the free plan today and see how our marketing plan software can lead your business to success!