Marketing plans are as basic as bread and butter. Creating a marketing plan, however, isn’t simple. You don’t have to be a genius to create an effective marketing plan, but you do need to be patient. Though, in today’s world, patience is scarce.
Today’s culture is steeped in instant gratification, which causes frustration and anger when results aren’t instant. For new entrepreneurs, this impatience can destroy their effort to build a business.
The biggest hit for new entrepreneurs comes when they skip the planning stage of marketing and try to wing it. If you just feel like jumping in, you should hire a professional marketing agency to create your marketing plan instead.
Five weeks of planning is worth more than five minutes of unstructured action
Imagine being dropped into the middle of the forest at night, surrounded by unfamiliar wildlife. If you didn’t plan ahead, you’re likely to make mistakes that will quickly get you hurt or killed. However, if you spent five weeks studying the behavior of wildlife like bears, snakes, and coyotes, you’d have a decent arsenal of knowledge to help you survive.
The same is true for marketing plans. If you jump into promoting and advertising your business, you’re going to run out of money before you even start building a successful business. When you have a well thought out plan, every move you make will be strategically tied to a specific and measurable goal. With a plan, you’ll know exactly how well you’re doing, and how far you are from achieving each goal.
Generating leads from your content requires deep planning
Paid traffic can get expensive. However, a professional marketing agency in your industry can develop a content marketing plan that will cut those costs by bringing in leads from your blog. According to one professional agency, 55% of their clients said blog leads were below the average cost. This is good news, but you can’t just start blogging and expect the leads to pour in.
You won’t generate a steady flow of organic leads without a plan. You need more than good content. You need content written by a professional copywriter who knows exactly how to connect with your visitors and get them to sign up for your email list or make a purchase.
What you want to share isn’t always what visitors want to read
When you decide to wing your marketing efforts, you’re likely to start posting content on a whim, as it comes to your mind. This can work for a personal blog but doesn’t usually support a business.
A professional marketing agency knows exactly how to tap into your market’s mind and craft content that grabs their attention and creates rapport with them. This might include publishing a series of 10 blogs over a period of time. Or, it might involve publishing a few highly controversial blogs and immediately sharing them on social media.
A marketing agency that has been around for some time will have years of experience working with multiple clients in the industry. They have the advantage of knowing through experience what kind of content works.
Social media strategies should be planned, too
Marketing statistics show that 85% of business owners don’t know which social media tools to use. Despite this, there’s a sense of urgency to jump into action on social media without strategizing first. This is the way personal social media accounts are launched, but it doesn’t work for a business. All social media marketing efforts should be tied to your overall marketing plan.
Without a marketing plan, your company won’t grow
Many entrepreneurs struggle to grow their business because they aren’t organized enough to move beyond a one-person show. If you don’t have a marketing plan, you can’t delegate tasks and responsibilities to the right people. You’ll also have a hard time retaining employees if you can’t provide clear roles and responsibilities.
One person can’t run their entire marketing strategy alone. Not forever, anyway. There will come a time when you need to delegate responsibilities to others if you want to grow.
If creating your own marketing plan seems like too much work, hire a professional agency to do it for you. You don’t need to rely on them forever. Once you get familiar with the strategy, you can continue implementing it yourself.