Your small business marketing marketplan can be a great asset for your business if you do it correctly. But if you shortcut your market planning process, you can ruin your business before it even gets off the ground.

Thus, the following small business marketing marketplan mistakes shold be avoided. After listing each, I provide what you should be doing with your market planning.

Small Business Marketing Marketplan 1:

Don’t do marketing research.

Everybody is different. The more different your target market is from you, the more difficult it is to market successfully without first doing marketing research.

For instance if you are in Generation X and you are marketing to Baby Boomers, your values, concerns, needs, wants, information needs and media use are quite different.

Besides generational differences, these two generations are in different life stages, with different tasks dominating their lives. Thus, you need different marketing appeals for each.

Small Business Marketing Marketplan 2:

Don’t worry about the marketing part of your business plan.

Do you believe that the only reason to do a business plan is to get investors and loan officers to give you money? The truth is that the money people are interested in how you plan to market your product because your small business marketing plan impacts your potential business success.

Besides the purpose of your business or marketing plan is more to guide your business than to recruit funds. If you’re only doing yours for a loan, you’re missing a great asset for your business.

Small Business Marketing Marketplan 3:

Don’t take time to target a market.

No matter how much you believe it, everybody will NOT want your product, so you can’t afford to market to everyone.

The most efficient way to market is to determine the people most likely to buy your product. Then learn all you can about them, and build your marketing on that knowledge.

To learn how to target a market using market segmentation see

Strategic Market Segmentation

Small Business Marketing Marketplan 4:

Delegate all your marketing strategies to agencies and consultants.

You are busy, but no one else knows your business as well as you do. Using a marketing agency or consultant can sometimes save you lots of time. For saving that time you can trade your money to pay the marketing experts.

Still YOU need to determine your business goals and objectives and the marketing strategies necessary to meet them. Pay the marketing experts to conduct research to gather information that you have determined you need to market successfully. Pay them to implement tactics that you have neither the skills nor time to do.

However, you need to control your marketing strategies. They comprise an important part of your business and marketing plan and you should understand the big picture for your business better than anybody else.

Small Business Marketing Marketplan 5:

Let media and other sales people decide your marketing tactics.

Media sales people’s first priority is their sales quotas and careers. Most will recommend marketing tactics that meet their sales quotas, their employer’s needs and their boss’ preferences.

Few take time to learn about your business, and even fewer will put your business’ needs above their needs. So you need to take the time to determine what tactics will best implement your marketing strategies. Only after you have determined that an advertisement in a particular medium is what you need to meet one of your marketing strategies should you contact a media salesperson.

If one contacts you before you have made this decision. Send them packing with a “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” Otherwise, they will “sell” you tactics that won’t advance your marketing or your business.

Small Business Marketing Marketplan 6:

Just launch your product now and workout the marketing details as you go.

You need to plan your marketing for a launch as carefully as you develop a good product.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you have to get everything perfect before you launce a product, but just leaving your marketing to chance assures that you will miss opportunities, or even worse, make mistakes that deter you from your long-range business and marketing goals.

Small Business Marketing Marketplan 7:

Just throw money at your marketing.

The reality is that spending lots of money on your marketing does NOT assure that your marketing will be successful. You can often accomplish just as much by spending your time and creativity rather than your money.

If you don’t have time to spend, plan out exactly what needs to be done and outsource it. You can save loads of money by using online freelance agencies. Just type “outsource sites” in Google, and you’ll get several.

In conclusion, you can avoid ruining your business with these seven small business marketing marketplan mistakes. You can build a marketing plan that will guide your business into success by staying grounded, by taking responsibility for your marketing, by planning your marketing well, and by implementing your marketing creatively.

To read more about marketing by this author, see

http://StrategicMarketSegmentation.com/blog

Copyright - Linda P. Morton - Best Books Plus - 2008

Small Business Marketing Marketplan Mistakes