The Simple, Easy Way to Create a 12-Month Marketing Plan

"Business strategy is the battle plan for a better future."

Patrick Dixon

Creating a marketing plan for your business is a bit like going to the gym.

One option is you can show up to the gym and wing your workout. By that, I mean you do cardio, you lift weights – and you hope (as I initially did) - that somehow, it will magically deliver the perfect body.

And why shouldn't it? You're showing up, after all. You're putting the hard work in. 

This is what I did for three months. I went to the gym five nights a week. I designed my own program and did cardio and weights like crazy.

As a result, my physical fitness went up, but my body shape didn't have anywhere near the transformation I was hoping for.

Meantime, in that same period of time I watched someone quite overweight completely transform their body. In the time it took them to go from plump to beach-ready, I went from meh to less-meh.

I was both amazed at this woman’s success and annoyed at myself. What did she do so differently anyhow? She worked out less than I did!

Then I realized the difference.

By working with a personal trainer who custom-designed her program and meal plan, she got far superior results, faster.

In other words – getting results is not about the effort – it's about doing the right things in the right combination. 

Creating the right marketing plan for your business is very much the same way. Winging your company’s marketing is like having no real marketing plan. Maybe you try a range of different things or prefer to only increase marketing intensity when sales slow down? Maybe revenue lurches from feast to famine and you no longer feel quite so in control of your company’s future?

If any of this sounds familiar, don't worry. Having a good solid marketing plan in place will fix these issues and put you back in the driver’s seat.

Whether your business is mega or micro-sized, the best marketing plans are the simplest.

Let's get you started on creating your 12-month Marketing Plan:

Step 1. First, what are your revenue goals for this year?

Now break these goals into quarterly, monthly, weekly, even daily goals. Now you've got your first set of marketing metrics to measure against.

Step 2. Leverage what works. If you haven't done a marketing audit yet, now would be a great time to find out what worked great, what worked okay, and what didn't work at all.

If you don't have the time to do a marketing audit, then know what your top three revenue generation strategies were from last year (these will form the initial foundation of your marketing plan and work as your "control," ie standard to beat). 

Step 3. Let's talk marketing budget: do you know the difference between a marketing engine and marketing gas?

You can listen to this 5-minute podcast that explains the difference. Essentially all your company's marketing needs to be allocated between building out your marketing engine (these are evergreen marketing tools that are used again) and marketing gas. Marketing gas, like gas in a car, is the disposable marketing cost to run your marketing engine. For example, your ad spend on Google, Facebook, Billboard advertising etc. This distinction is important when creating your marketing plan to ensure that you're not just throwing your marketing budget away on marketing gas.

Step 4. Download a copy of our 12-month marketing template.

Step 5. Using the template, allocate each of your key marketing activities for each month.

List out the irresistible offers you'll use each month so you can get blog posts, social media posts, and email campaigns created to reach the maximum number of people. 

At the end of each day, week or month, track your marketing metrics for each of your activities. 

That's it! A simple yet powerful 12-Month Marketing Plan to help grow your business!

Remember your marketing plan is not set in stone.

Each month you can reassess and reallocate depending on your results and business needs. Need more clients? Invest more in your lead generation tools. Need higher conversion rates? Invest in better follow-up systems or value-added marketing.

Need more guidance? Listen to these quick podcasts below.

Episode 96 What size is your marketing engine?

Episode 8  Why digital marketing is not enough

Episode 57 Why marketing budgets are BS (here’s what’s better)

Prefer us to do it for you? Schedule a Discovery Call call today