Every small business owner needs the best small business marketing plan ever to launch into 2012.
Your small business marketing plan for 2012, needs to be built around a strategy. It doesn’t start with “doing” social media. It doesn’t start with a website, or SEO (search engine optimization).
In his newly revised and updated book, Duct Tape Marketing: The world’s most practical small business marketing guide, John Jantsch wants you to succeed with a marketing system that starts with strategy first (before tactics).
Marketing Plan – 3 Legged Stool
1. Your Ideal Client: Your ideal client or customer is the narrowest, most focused part of your market composed of the specific group of people you aim to become expert at serving.
For any strategy and corresponding set of strategies to work, they must appeal to someone. The first element, and in some cases the primary element, is deciding who. Develop your marketing strategy around a narrowly defined ideal client above all.
Action Step 1: Develop a profile of your ideal client or customer.
2. Your Difference: Your difference is what sets you apart from your competition. It’s the approach, product or service that sets you apart from your competition.
“After developing a profile of an ideal client, it’s time to find a way to appeal to this group. …the only sure way to do this is by discovering or creating an approach, product or service that clearly differentiates you from the rest of the market.”
Action Step 2: “Find the way of doing things, your customers truly value.”
3. Your Strategy: Your strategy is your “How”. It describes how you will go about your marketing so that your ideal client or customer is brought together with your difference. Every decision you make about your marketing plan needs to be considered and planned with your marketing strategy in mind.
“The final step in the marketing strategy game is to take what we’ve done previously–defining an ideal client and creating a core differentiator–and turning it into your ideal stated strategy.”
Action Step 3: Decide how you will achieve your goals, mission and objectives–BEFORE you decide which marketing tactics and actions steps you will take.
Your Small Business Marketing Plan for 2012:Â Strategy Before Tactics
“Let me return once again to Sun Tzu and The Art of War –‘All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.’
Now, before you determine whether Facebook is better for your business than LinkedIn or if direct mail is still an effective way to generate leads, start at the point where you will ultimately create the greatest possible impact–strategy!”
Duct Tape Marketing is a must-read for small business owners developing a systematic approach to marketing. John Jantsch has provided a guide to:
Find out what works and do more of it!
Related articles on the web:
- John Jantsch, Dan Ariely, and Umpqua Bank’s Ray Davis Help Business Owners Market Their Way to Increased Profits (prweb.com)
- Effective Referral Generation Is No Accident (John Jantsch) (businessforums.verizon.net)
