Ten Vital Questions to Create a Small Business Marketing Plan

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BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS

Free Small Business Marketing Guide

Ten Vital Questions For Creating Your Small Business Marketing Plan www.BusinessBulletpoints.com


 BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Small Business Marketing Guide – Ten Vital Questions For Creating Your Marketing Plan

Introduction Welcome to this Free Marketing Guide from Business Bulletpoints. This guide is designed to let you know about ten vital questions that any small business or freelancer should ask when creating their marketing plan. Share this tool – You are welcome to use, distribute, publish and share this tool; license terms are available on the last page

Get the most out of this tool You’ll get the most out of this tool if you use it alongside the Business Bulletpoints Blog Article which you can access via the link to the right.

Ten Vital Questions For Creating Your Marketing Plan

Benefits to you If you’re not an expert marketer, the idea of creating a marketing plan might be daunting. Fortunately, there are some simple, practical questions that you can ask yourself which will make creating and implementing your marketing plan much easier. This means that you’ll get better value for money for your marketing budget, can easily reach your potential customers in a timely way and help you grow your business.


 BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Small Business Marketing Guide – Ten Vital Questions For Creating Your Marketing Plan

What will this tool help you to do? This tool will help you in several areas:  Understand your approach to marketing in a simple, structured way  Think about and explain what your small business offers, to whom and what you want them to do as a result  Use the answers to inform and define a great marketing plan  Provides a place to answer the questions and write down your thoughts

How to think about and answer these questions If you want to get the most out of this process, it helps to ask and answer these questions in the right way. Here’s some advice on a useful approach to take:  Be as specific as you can in your answers  Think in terms of niches and a focussed approach  Remember that you don’t need to get everything ‘right’ straightaway  Prepare to test and refine your answers and marketing in future  Your answers will differ based on what your business does and how it works


ďƒ˜ BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Small Business Marketing Guide – Ten Vital Questions For Creating Your Marketing Plan

Questions about your business, products and services These questions are all about understanding what your small business has to offer your customers, helping you to define your product and service and the unique selling points that make the difference.

1. What is the specific product or service that you are marketing? Clearly define in one or two sentences exactly what your business provides, emphasizing your key products and services as a customer might experience them.

Answer

2. What is it about your product or service that is unique or sets it apart? Explain what is unique about your business offering. Share detail on your products and services about what makes them desirable and valuable to your customers. Answer

3. Why would a customer buy from you, rather than one of your competitors? What makes a customer look at your business and understand what sets it apart from your competitors? Explain the value that your business offering provides. Answer


ďƒ˜ BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Small Business Marketing Guide – Ten Vital Questions For Creating Your Marketing Plan

Questions about your potential audience These questions help you to identify and understand your audience. They will help you decide where your potential audience is, who they are and what they want.

4. Who are the audience that your products and services are targeted at? Identify the people or businesses that are most likely to be interested in what you have to offer. The more targeted, the easier this will make things. Answer

5. What does your audience want or need, what is the benefit to them? Clarify what it is that your target audience specifically requires from your business, product or service. This is a clearly explainable benefit of what is in it for them. Answer

6. Where does your audience hang out? Use your experience to think about where your audience are likely to be. Again, the more clearly you can define this, the better you can target your marketing. Answer


 BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Small Business Marketing Guide – Ten Vital Questions For Creating Your Marketing Plan

Questions about engaging with your audience These questions are about engaging with your audience and the customer action that you want them to take as a result of seeing your marketing and advertising.

7. What are the most effective ways / channels to reach your audience? Based on where your audience hangs out, brainstorm the most likely ways that you might be able to reach them. Answer

8. How will your audience engage with you? Assuming that people do reach you, think about how you will engage with them. How can you make contacting your business as easy and quick as possible? Answer

9. What action do you want people to take? Known as the ‘Call To Action’, this is one of the most vital parts of marketing, defining what you want people to do as a result of engaging with your business. Answer


 BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Small Business Marketing Guide – Ten Vital Questions For Creating Your Marketing Plan

What is the next step? Answering all of these questions will provide a strong basis for a simple and effective marketing plan. Once you know what you are offering, who you are targeting, how you are targeting them and what you want them to do as a result, you’ll be in a much stronger position. You can then use this information to build compelling messages and calls to action that get you customers, build your brand and lead to a successful business.


 BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Small Business Marketing Guide – Ten Vital Questions For Creating Your Marketing Plan


 BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Small Business Marketing Guide – Ten Vital Questions For Creating Your Marketing Plan

 Please find links to useful books below

Further Resources – Useful books Book Title  The Ultimate Marketing Plan

Amazon US

View / Buy

Amazon UK

View / Buy

Amazon CA

View / Buy

‘This book teaches you how to integrate such tools as social media marketing, networking, and strategic memberships into a complete plan.’

 Marketing Plan Template: Writing Marketing Plans for Small Business

View / Buy

View / Buy

View / Buy

‘A practical guide for developing a marketing plan for promoting your small business.’

 The One-Day Marketing Plan

View / Buy

View / Buy

View / Buy

‘This book shows entrepreneurs, freelancers and small business owners how to quickly design a marketing plan for any business.’

 Marketing Plans: How to Prepare Them, How View / Buy to Use Them

View / Buy

View / Buy

‘Every point in this book is illustrated with practical examples, made actionable through step-bystep templates and exercises.’

 More books on marketing

View / Buy

View / Buy

View / Buy

Other popular and relevant books on marketing.

Please note that the book links above are affiliate links; this means we get a small commission when you visit and purchase from Amazon. This doesn’t cost you anything but helps us to maintain and produce our free guides.


 BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Small Business Marketing Guide – Ten Vital Questions For Creating Your Marketing Plan

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