VERY Simple! Marketing Plan for any Small Business

So you have started a small business and now you are wondering about marketing and so you are searching for a simple but effective marketing plan, that will help your small business to stand out from the crowd, to get that much needed visibility, mind share, brand recall consequently healthy sales.

In case you don't know what these terms that I just talked about, mean, here are definitions

Brand awareness: The extent to which consumers are familiar with the distinctive qualities or image of a particular brand of goods or services.

Mind Share: Mind share relates generally to the development of consumer awareness or popularity, and is one of the main objectives of advertising and promotion. When people think of examples of a product type or category, they usually think of a limited number of brand names. The aim of mind share is to establish a brand as being one of the best kinds of a given product or service, and to even have the brand name become a synonym for the product or service offered (wikipedia).

Brand Recall: A qualitative measure of how well a brand name is connected with a product/service type or class of products by consumers (BusinessDictionary.com) For instance if you conduct a survey and ask people “Can you explain what Google is ?” or “Name the fast food brands you know” etc.

Remember when it comes to marketing, it’s not about doing one time thing and doing it the way everyone else is doing it. I will explain why you need to do it constantly and why you need to do it differently from the rest.

Marketing is easypeasy, there is no rocket science in it, yep except on bigger scale it can eat a lot of money!

Simple Marketing Plan for any Small Business

Here let me sketch out that easypeasy marketing plan for your business, here take a look!

Okay that’s all you need, yeah that’s it, that’s as simple as a marketing plan can be!

Let me explain the whole thing one by one, just don’t get sleepy!

First let me explain why you need to be different, creative and why you need to do it constantly.

Why you need to be different, creative in your marketing ?

Reason is Marketing Clutter: Due to enormity of advertising clutter, ubiquity of product/service information on overwhelming scales, mediums target customers are less interested in any product/service information, marketing. [1][2][3]

Because there is too much of one and the same thing (product/service info, brand clutter), nothing new, nothing different, nothing interesting.

That means to make target market/client take interest in your brand marketing you need to be really creative, different in your approach to marketing.

Why you need to do it constantly ? 

Reason is Mere Exposure Effect/Familiarity principle: “The mere-exposure effect (MEE)is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. In social psychology, this effect is sometimes called the familiarity principle.” [4]

MEE has been shown over and over to work really effectively in advertising (check the referenced article), that’s why advertisers world over constantly spend 100s of billions of dollars on advertising. [5]

So you see, that’s why you need to be creative, different in your marketing and doing it constantly.

Give Freebies

Means offering free things, gifts that are useful to whom you offer them and cost relatively less plus have long life.

By long life I mean, things that you offer as freebies are utilized by your customers/b2b clients for at least 6 months.

If such things cost huge then that doesn’t worth it because you won’t be able to do it constantly, meaning giving it now and then for marketing purposes.

Being different/creative means when you offer such things don’t be like others (keep the above mentioned clutter point and standing out in the crowd in mind), like for instance if you offer a coffee mug as freebie or an yearly calendar don’t be like brands who offer such things simply with their logo/brand slogan.

Because that won’t help in such immense clutter, what you for example can do is to offer coffee mugs with their (your target market, clients) pet animals pictures on it plus your logo/slogan or can provide their pet animals or their family/friends/colleagues etc pictures in a yearly calendar with some thought provoking quotes or quotes given to you by those customers/clients.

This is what being different, creative means, this will help your brand stand out, get that top of the head awareness, brand exposure etc.

Keep doing it constantly, like in coffee mugs you can do it once every year or twice every year and obviously when it comes to yearly calendar you can do it once.

To emphasize the importance of freebies consider the following fact:

The fast moving consumer packaged goods sector spends upwards of $176 billion on freebies, discounts, trade promotion. [6]

Go Online

Keep the same principles mentioned above (be different/creative plus do it constantly) in mind when you go online.

Like for instance when you make page of your brand on facebook, follow that principle, instead of sharing what your business is offering, just like all other businesses do on facebook these days, you can talk about something interesting to your target market, some new discovery made recently or maybe giving suggestions, tips, helping your target market to save more money, how to do certain things, talking about how to be happy, talking about new movies and relating it to your brand in an interesting way if you can..., sharing quotes/pictures from your best clients/customers … sky is the limit.

Lastly before going online, make sure if you really need it because online can consume good amount of time, energy.

One more thing don’t go for too many online social platforms, couple (max 4) platforms that suits your business, brand would be more than enough.

Do Brochures/Leaflets

If you have been wondering what is the back bone of any small business in terms of marketing, my reply would be brochures/leaflets/pamphlets.

You may ask, why ? Well they offer so much that you can’t imagine plus they are cheap and thus you can do it creatively and constantly.


For more check out this little article and you will agree with me, plus you be glad you have read it.


Here The Best Marketing Strategy for Newly Started Small Business

Again instead of sharing your products/services details, how about sharing a story, an interesting fact, something nostalgic, some practical tips that your target market may find interesting and helpful.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t share your product/service info on brochures rather it means you should but keep the “be different/creative” point in mind. The more you are different, creative in your brochure the more the target market will take notice consequently more mind share, more sales!

Create an Interesting Brand Logo, Slogan

Means when you go for logo design or slogan, keep the rule of being different, creative in mind.

For instance pet food dealer “Meow Mix” had this really creative slogan “Tastes So Good, Cats Ask for It by Name”.  

You see, that’s what I am talking about, yes such slogan aren’t easy to create but if you think about it couple of years … er I mean couple of weeks you can get a really creative, different brand slogan that will definitely help your brand! 

Put that logo/slogan on freebies/brochures/online/sales staff dress etc.

 

Do it always, means whenever you do some marketing, make sure your logo/slogan gets into it.

Dress Code of Sales Staff

Well you send your sales guys to make sale right? 

To deal with your potential clients right ? 

So how about getting them a little creative and different dress, that gives your brand a nice little mind share every time your sales guys makes a visit to the market.

You can go as far as haircut of your sales staff, perfume they wear on duty, wrist watch they need to have, their age etc etc all of these things can really help your brand stand out.

Doesn’t mean you should have some crazy dress code, like we often see at those crazy fashion shows, what I mean is, having a proper one, which signals that your brand takes its business seriously (in terms product/service quality, satisfaction etc).

That’s it, over to you guys!

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References:

1.      MacInnis, Deborah J., Christine Moorman, and Bernard J. Jaworski (1991), "Enhancing and Measuring Consumers Motivation, Opportunity, and Ability to Process Brand Information From Ads," Journal of Marketing, 4 (October), 32-53.

2.      McDonnell, F. (2005), “Integrating word of mouth marketing”, paper presented at the International Word-of-mouth Marketing Conference, 6-7 October, Hamburg, in Andres, N.(Ed.), Proceedings of the 1st International Word-of-Mouth Marketing Conference, Brand science Institute, Hamburg, Germany.

3.      Nielsen (2007), “Trust in advertising, a global Nielsen consumer report”, October, available at www.nielsen.com/solutions/TrustinAdvertisingOct07.pdf

4.      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect

5.      Alan Thein Durning, How Much is Enough: The Consumer Society and the Future of the Earth, ed. Linda Starke, Worldwatch Environmental Alert Series (London: Earthscan, 1992), p. 120.

6.      Kantar Retail (2010), “Trade promotion merchandising and spending industry benchmarking study”, white paper, available at: www.retailforward.com/Marketing/TradePromotion.pdf (accessed 18 June 2010).