No marketing team? Use this 4-Step marketing plan

Have you ever felt like you’ve hit a wall with your business growth? Like you’re not getting any new clients or referrals because all your friends and family already know about your company? I know the feeling, it’s frustrating.

It’s time to start marketing beyond your inner circle and make a scalable marketing plan. Yeah, I know it sounds tough, but trust me, it’s worth it.

Yeah, easy for me to suggest, right? I mean, I’m not the one wearing many hats like you, juggling operations and the technical side, so I get why you’re hesitant to hire a marketing manager.

But before you do that, you should know the basics of marketing yourself. Otherwise, you might end up hiring someone who talks a good game but doesn’t deliver the results you need.

That’s why I’m sharing a 4-step marketing plan with you that you can easily implement even without a full-fledged marketing team.

These steps cover the basics of marketing and are enough to create a digital campaign or a month’s worth of content while you’re figuring out if you need to outsource marketing. So let’s get started!

Four steps marketing plan

Step 1: Determine your target market’s pain point

To kick off this plan, you don’t have to go far. Start by having a genuine conversation with your current and past clients. Ask them about their challenges and problems, how you helped them in the past, and how you can improve.

You’ll be amazed at how much you can learn from them, and you might even discover some strengths and unique selling points that you weren’t aware of.

Now, armed with this knowledge, you can incorporate these selling points into your next ad or digital campaign. You can even test out new ideas by offering free trials or an introductory webinar.

And if you find that your clients are really responding to a particular service or product, go all-in on marketing that strength.

Step 2: Find out what your competitors are doing

You must be on top of what’s happening in your industry and how your competitors are marketing their services. Answer these three simple questions:

• What are the obstacles your competitors face?
• What is their success strategy?
• What areas need improvement?

Looking at competitors doesn’t mean copying them mindlessly. Look into their best practices and see if you can make them your own. Also, look into the gaps; there might be a common recurring complaint that your business can solve.

For example, there are lots of clients who cancel Design Pickle because of poor design quality. Their words, not ours. With this gap in mind, we choose to improve the client’s design experience when they onboard with us.

Step 3: Delegate

Once you’re rock solid on your plan, find a professional design team that can do all the creatives you need to launch your campaign. From landing pages to social media posts to email banners, Deer Designer can do it.

In a single request or ticket, you can describe what you need in detail, and we will provide all the designs you need. Once you’re happy with them, you can easily download the designs and schedule them according to your timeline. Easy-peasy!

Step 4: Monitor and improve

Marketing does not end once the event is over, the posts are published, and the leads are collected. A marketing strategy is a never-ending cycle of testing, tweaking, and measuring.

Aside from scheduling your posts, also schedule a day dedicated to reviewing the results of your marketing campaign. 

No matter how small the event or effort is, that is a good start. If it was successful, you can easily scale it by increasing the ad spend or publishing on more platforms.

Failing to plan is planning to fail

It’s very important to have a marketing plan. Even if you’re just starting out and don’t have a lot of money to spend, it’s important to have a plan in place.

Start small, even before building a marketing team. This way, through a mini-campaign, you will have a benchmark on what worked and what didn’t, reducing the likelihood of losing money over failed campaigns.

Remember, keep the strategy in-house. You want to own the full marketing plan and the full vision for the company. Outsource the rest, including design, to a professional and reliable on-demand design service.