How’s Your 2022 Marketing Plan Looking?

Most small business owners we talk to say they’d like to generate more business and increase their turnover. After all, isn’t that WHY you’re in business? So, have you developed your 2022 marketing plan yet? Planning and consistency are key to marketing success.

Your Marketing Plan for 2022 doesn’t have to be complex

Sit down with a piece of paper or a blank document on your device and write:

• Your business mission (external) and vision (internal) – this is the overarching theme for the marketing plan
• List your products or services
• Who’s your ideal customer? You may have one for each product or service, however it’s important to understand who you’re targeting with your marketing
• List the potential ways you could market your products or services to your ideal customers, for example:
  • Website copy
  • Social media posts
  • Blog posts
  • Guest posting on related blogs
  • Entering a business award
  • Google or Facebook advertising
  • Networking
  • Trade shows
  • Other marketing tools that work for your business

Let’s break it down …

On a second piece of paper or document, start to plan out what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. For example:

• Post on social media – will you do this daily or weekly? Which days? Monday, Wednesday and Friday?
• Update website – nominate the date you’ll start and your goal date to finish
• Blog posts – plan out when you’ll post – weekly, monthly or quarterly? If monthly, when will you publish – 1^st of each month, 2^nd Wednesday of each month? Choose a specific date
• Business awards – identify which awards you’ll enter and when they open
• You get the idea – follow on with each marketing avenue you wish to pursue

Next, take one of these aspects and expand on it. Let’s say you plan to publish a blog post each month. While you could publish more often, a monthly post is sustainable for most businesses.

Here’s how to plan out your blog posts for 2022

• List your products and/or services
• Allocate one product or service to focus on each month
• Take the January topic and write down who your target audience is, what problem you solve for them, the process involved/client journey and the results you achieve
• Think of a recent client who has used that service, preferably one who gave you a glowing testimonial
• Contact the client and ask them whether you can write a blog post about their experience with your business and your product or service. If you’re a B2B operation, you can offer a backlink to their website in exchange for their time and endorsement, which is great for their SEO and often a very welcome “thank you”.
• Follow this technique for each month and you’ll have at least the outline for each monthly blog post, if not a draft. A year’s worth of blog posts, planned, outlined and under way – woohoo!

If you don’t have enough products or services to cover 12 months’ worth of posts, or you’ve already published posts about them, other blog post ideas could include: New products or services, educating your target market about your product or service (use the kind of information you’d convey in a face-to-face sales spiel), profile a new team member, expand on your customers’ frequently asked questions, and the list goes on.

The next step…

After you’ve mapped out your monthly blog posts, consider how you can repurpose the content into social media posts. This saves the time and effort of writing all your posts from scratch.

Next, move on to your plan for social media. We find it efficient and effective to map out our content monthly in advance. Our team use a simple table set up in Word, with a daily theme, such as a motivational quote on Mondays, Tip Tuesday, Wednesday Wins, etc. Then we plan out the content for each day of the month.

Working in advance, we map out content for March in early February, so we then have time to design the images and schedule our posts in advance. This ensures we are consistent in posting, demonstrating to our social media followers that we are a professional business while also reinforcing what we offer, the results we achieve for clients and keeping us top-of-mind.

There are so many marketing activities to choose from and it’s easy to be distracted by the latest “bright, shiny object” when it comes to marketing. Mapping out a plan and executing it consistently is what has been proven to yield great results. There’s no reason why you can’t revise your plan or add another marketing technique along the way.

When it comes to your 2022 marketing plan, our team can assist you with writing a polished, professional message for your website copy, business award submission, company profile and much more. We’re always happy to discuss your plans and offer a complimentary 10-15 minute discovery call. Go to our Contact page to arrange a suitable time. We look forward to working with you soon.