Make Your Marketing Plan Matter

There’s a good article on marketing plans by Matt Alderton appearing today on the Nielsen Professional Network Small Business Resource Center: Make Your Marketing Plan Matter.

“The benefits of having the plan is that it gave us a roadmap for budgeting our marketing dollars,” Kirk continues. “It gave us a framework for making spending decisions.” More than that though, her marketing plan gave Kirk a framework for making strategic decisions. It helped her budget not only her money, but also her time and her energy.

“Small businesses don’t have million-dollar marketing budgets, so a marketing plan is even more important in order to make sure that efforts are coordinated and in the right areas,” she says. “In order to be effective, you generally need to integrate your marketing efforts and make sure the right message is getting to the right customers. Doing that without planning it in advance is difficult.”

Plans Beget Profits

Indeed, marketing your business without having a plan is like shooting a gun without having a target. Not only is it difficult, but it’s also reckless, ineffective and even dangerous.

That’s just an excerpt. I recommend reading the full piece.