What are inexpensive, yet effective ways for small businesses without resident marketing skills to create a marketing plan?

I always recommend a content marketing strategy to any company with breadth of expertise and experience in their field (as it sounds like you have). Basically - I'll bet you're very good at explaining why what you're selling is superior to the alternatives if we met face to face. The problem with that of course is you can only meet so many people face to face, and it sounds like you need to meet more. Content marketing lets you do just that. With 15 people with expertise, creating the content would be super simple too, get everyone to write one article (1000-3000 words) on their subject matter per month, in words geared for your target demographic (if you're selling to doctors, it's okay to use medical terminology. if you're selling to laymen, it's not), and you'd have more content than you'd know what to do with. Not selling anything - explaining things of value. Giving away knowledge. Positioning yourselves as experts. Optimize that content for search engines (you can either take a short course on keyword optimization, or use a tool like Spokal (which I work for) to make it simple for you. Total costs: Website: from free (some time) up. (say $2-5k to have a designer do it all for you), and this is assuming you don't already have one. make sure if you have one built it's built on wordpress. Content marketing tool (also sometimes called inbound marketing software): $39-$1000+ a month. (hubspot, pardot, marketo, spokal etc) Hosting: $7-$29/month You can do this from less than $50/month, or you can go much, much higher. Write those articles, optimize them for search queries people are actually using, become an authority in your space, and people will start coming to you. Then use software to start getting people to sign up for an email list, and converting them to customers. Time frame: 6-12 months to start seeing really good results, though you will start seeing more traffic and new customers sooner than that.

I assume you are interested in marketing via the web. If you are not than you should - it's going to be the most cost-effective and measurable path. First thing to recognize is that the best marketing is actually not marketing (at least no in the offline sense) - it's becoming an authority / subject matter expert in your field in the eyes of others. The way to achieve that is to start creating relevant content that will distinguish you in your field and will give you credibility. Write blog posts about your area of expertise, create FAQs, answer questions on Quora, etc. People will start noticing, giving you credibility, website visits, search engine inbound links, etc. This generates traffic, interest, sales. It gives you clout. In parallel take a good hard look at your website and make sure it is geared towards incoming leads - the people who will visit your website as a result of your increased visibility. Are you answering the right questions? is it easy to sign up / get info / etc? You should experiment using AB Testing and do some basic landing page optimization - very simple stuff to make sure you are at least OK.

You're not alone. Many small businesses do not have a marketing plan nor know where to start. ThriveHive (the company I work for) addressed this in its most-recent blog post: http://thrivehive.com/how-to-make-a-small-business-marketing-plan At the bottom of the post is a link to sample marketing plans. I hope this helps.

What do you do? Why are you trying to market? How open is your demographic? If your a small business within a developed community I would start there first. Begin fund raisers and/or community involvement events to begin awareness there and raise money for new marketing tools. Look into the standard promotion mix and start small before paying hundreds for radio and literature ads. Upgrade your services or goods to consistently entice your customers and take record to see what kind of plans or promotions that people like to jump on. Begin developing more promotion like the ones that are working.

Hi, One of the best ways to do so is to turn to crowd sourcing. There are plenty of crowd sourcing professional agencies out there who would turn it around for you without breaking your bank. http://www.agencyonnet.com is one such platform where you could post your requirement and let the crowd work on your brief.

@http://www.primaltweet.com/What_We_Do.html PrimalTweet will help you: -identify and engage your social media audience -develop a strategic social media plan -develop customized content -cultivate an organic fan base -generate back links from other websites (essential for organic SEO) -steer users to your primary website or designated landing page -enhance Search Engine Optimization through authentic activity -quantify and report your social media influence. "100% Organic" means that PrimalTweet crafts every tweet, facebook update, and blog post for your business in accordance with YOUR own customized strategic plan.   With PrimalTweet, you can be assured that your business will have REAL interaction with REAL "friends", fans, and followers. "Locally Sourced" means that we focus on geographically specific content generation and social networks to maximize your local influence. "Cultivating" an audience is the essence of in-bound marketing.  Providing content to audiences that is useful, interesting, or entertaining is the key to becoming a market influencer. "Influencing" an audience leads to re-posting of YOUR content.  Re-posting of content leads to better Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and more traffic to your primary website or targeted landing page. "Engaging" your  prospective clients or customers is the power of Social Media.   Treating the internet as an electronic classified ad or a glorified pamphlet falls far short of the promise of the technology.   Social Media is changing the world through conversations of the willing and the passionate not by "targeting of demographics". "Converting" client interest  into a sale is largely a factor of trust.  Being authentic, honest, proactive and engaged is the best thing your business can do to make effective use of Social Media.

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