What is a good marketing plan for small businesses in general?

Despite not knowing what business you are in or where you are located, please have a read of my blog post "Marketing Ideas All Under $99 Per Month' http://onqmarketingblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/marketing-ideas-for-just-99-per-month/ The post outlines what you could very well adapt as a 12-month marketing strategy (if applicable to your business) for very little outlay All the best..

It all depends as always, but for small businesses where capital is an issue inbound marketing with social media is the way to go. You can create great content or help people actually with a problem as it relates to you. This can build strong fans and followers and taps into the ultimate form of marketing, which is word of mouth. It's also very cost effective and gets the ball rolling the right way. If you're going to pay for things then make sure that you have a very good targeted plan, where you are talking directly to the people you want to be talking to, otherwise inbound in the way to go for small businesses.

Your marketing plan is going to depend on your company's differentiation from your competitors and your target market.  The differentiation will drive your messaging and your target market will help determine the channels that you need to use to connect with them. Your difference has to be meaningful to your potential customer.  It has to be different enough that they can't get it using their current solution and be a problem they want to fix.  All your messaging should convey that difference and why it is important; if it doesn't do that... drop it and come up with something else. After you've got your messaging, it's all about layering.  The more times that you talk to your customers, the more the message will begin to sink in and they will think about your offering. Don't forget to vary your messaging too (but still keep communicating your differentiation).  This offers a few benefits: You don't put all your eggs in one basket.  Think of it from the perspective of your stock portfolio: you wouldn't want to invest all your money in GM, would you? You can test the effectiveness of the message to see which one performs best and in which channel and adjust your marketing efforts accordingly towards the things that offer the greatest ROI. Prospects can suffer from "message fatigue" where they start to tune out your efforts (like that song on the radio that was really good but now just grates on your nerves).  Adjusting the message helps alleviate this problem. Marketing isn't about finding that one silver bullet that will bring customers knocking down the doors... it's about building an awareness in the mind of your prospects. Good luck.

ThriveHive's latest blog post actually answers this question, as it provides 6 easily-actionable steps to creating a small business marketing plan: http://thrivehive.com/how-to-make-a-small-business-marketing-plan

I have recently started reading "Never Stop Marketing" that gives great food for thought on creating your strategy - it is applicable for all business types and sizes. http://jer979.com/igniting-the-revolution/

For a small business starting on internet marketing, below is a step by step plan that they can use - Book Domain, Build Website and Think Search: http://www.indiagodigital.com/internet-marketing-gen/internet-marketing-steps-for-small-business-how-to-part-1/ Spreading your online presence and establishing your social media presence: http://www.indiagodigital.com/internet-marketing-gen/small-business-internet-marketing-how-to-steps-part-2/ Start Tracking: http://www.indiagodigital.com/internet-marketing-gen/internet-marketing-for-small-business-how-to-steps-part-3/

Like others here, I recommend inbound, which includes the following: blogging social media content downloads website landing pages email marketing You get your leads through your website, which means they're more engaged than those you purchase. There is no cold-calling. And it builds momentum over time. Also, if you're running a startup, there is no better way to learn about your target markets.To help you understand how inbound works and why, here's a playbook my agency put together specifically for small businesses:http://bit.ly/1hKRaDp Okay, so methodology is part 1. The next thing is to develop solid and tangible goals. With inbound, we look at traffic, leads, and customers. Simple, right? But we also have to look at where we're starting from. If you have traffic coming to your site, but no leads, we focus on marketing tactics that will help leverage your existing momentum and capture more leads. If traffic is the issue, we focus on those tactics that take care of that first.To help you hone in on your exact goals, here's a handy calculator that takes all three of those into consideration:http://bit.ly/1UpzY49 Lastly, for organizational purposes, and to keep your marketing plan in focus, here is a spreadsheet we use in Google (directions to migrate to Google are included):http://bit.ly/1mv2xBn

There are some great comments here, but I'm a big fan of keeping things simple. Small businesses have limited resources and mounting pressure to go generate sales. The best marketing plan is one that is designed to address the following questions: 1) Who are your best, most profitable and loyal customers? 2) Where did they come from and why did they buy from you? 3) What makes your offerings different and better than the alternatives? 4) How can you easily and readily promote your value drivers to more of these types of customers? There's a lot of tactical recommendations below, but answering the four questions above will help you develop a strategic marketing plan that can be supported by tactical implementation. Social media, blogging, going off-line, etc... these are all great, but you need to ask yourself WHO are you trying to target, and WHAT do you want them to do once you contact them.

I think there are a range of things that a business can do to market themselves, but these days it really boils down to 2 very core things. First step, define yourself. You need to develop a strong brand identity and do the necessary work in terms of establishing what your brand identity is. A great way to do that is to map out your company values, your 'philosophy' if you will. Try and think of 3-5 things that your business stands for. Are you environmentally friendly? Are you focussed on customer service? Are you anti-jargon? Think about it long and hard, and then you'll be able to develop a tone of voice that makes your marketing activities a lot more uniform and imparts your company's personality. In terms of marketing, I say go digital. There's not much point in traditional advertising for small businesses. Things like SEO and social media are a great way to market yourself online. SEO helps you rank higher in search for certain keywords thus increasing your web visibility and social media accounts on things like Twitter means you can talk directly to your audience, follow competitors etc. You can do this yourself, but if you don't know how it can be difficult to know where to start. There are a lot of SEO training courses and social media workshops that can teach you the basics, and there are some specially for beginners like this one here - http://www.thoughtshift.co.uk/digital-marketing-training/seo-training/seo-beginner-training/ You could also invest in paid search, pay per click services are a great way to have an impact quickly.