A one page marketing plan for a small business

A marketing plan for a small business needs eight answers, and it fits on one sheet of paper: who buys from you, where they are when they decide, what you want more of, what you will offer, which channels you will use, how much you will spend each month, how you will know it worked, and when you will look at it again. Writing it takes about an hour. Most of the value is in doing the thinking once, so that every decision after it is quick.

This is the template we give to advertisers who ask us where to start. We run a marketplace for local advertising space, so we see a lot of small businesses at the moment of deciding how to spend their first few hundred dollars, and the ones who do well are almost never the ones with the biggest budget. They are the ones who wrote down what they were trying to do.

Why one page

A forty page marketing plan is a document. A one page plan is a tool. It goes on the wall above the desk, or on the inside of the van door, and it answers the question "should we do this?" every time somebody rings offering a radio package, a listing in a directory, or a sponsorship of the school gala. If the offer does not fit the page, the answer is no, and you did not have to think about it.

It also stops the most common mistake, which is doing a bit of everything. A business with $400 a month spread across five channels cannot tell which of them is working and ends up dropping all of them. One paid channel, run for eight weeks and measured, tells you something.

The template

Copy the headings below onto a page. One or two sentences under each. If a box takes more than that, you have not decided yet.

1. Who buys from you

One sentence. Not "everyone in Hamilton". The person who actually pays you most often: a homeowner in their forties who has just bought, a parent of a primary school child, a tradie who needs a part today, a retired couple with a garden. If you have two very different customers, pick the one you want more of and write the plan for them.

2. Where they are when they decide

Where is that person, physically or online, at the moment they think "I need to sort that"? A plumber's customer is in the plumbing merchant or the kitchen showroom. A physio's customer is in the gym, the sports club or the pharmacy. A cafe's customer is walking past at quarter to eight. This box decides your channels, so spend the most time on it. If you are not sure, ask your last ten customers where they were.

3. What you want more of

The one job, product or booking you want more of this quarter. Not the whole list. A painter who does interiors, exteriors and roofs should pick the one with the best margin and the least travel and advertise that. People respond to a specific offer far more than to a list of everything you can do.

4. The offer

What you will say. One message, one action. "Heat pump serviced before winter, book by the end of May." "Free first assessment for new patients." "Mention this poster for a free coffee with any lunch." The offer should be easy to say out loud in one breath, and it should be something a person can act on today.

5. The channels

One paid, two free. The free ones are nearly always the same for every local business: a complete Google Business Profile with recent photos and reviews, and a shop front, van or website that says plainly what you do. The paid one comes from box 2. If your customers are standing in another local business when they decide, a placement there is the obvious pick. If they search at the moment of need, Google Ads. If they are the same few hundred families every Saturday, a club sponsorship. Pick one.

6. The monthly number

How much you will spend, and will not go past, for the next three months. Most New Zealand small businesses land somewhere between one and five percent of revenue. Write the actual dollar figure, not the percentage.

7. How you will know it worked

A number you can count, decided now. Enquiries, quotes, bookings, new patients, scans of a QR code. And the way you will count it: a different phone number on the advertisement, a code word, a QR code, or simply asking every new customer how they heard of you and writing it in a notebook. If you cannot name the number, you will not know whether to keep going.

8. The review date

Eight weeks from the day the channel goes live. Put it in the calendar. Almost nothing works in two weeks and almost everything that works has shown itself in eight.

A filled-in example

Here is the page for a made-up two-person physiotherapy practice in Hillcrest, Hamilton, opened eighteen months ago, busy on Mondays and quiet on Thursdays.

Who buys. Adults aged 30 to 55 who play sport at the weekend or sit at a desk all week, living within ten minutes' drive of the clinic.

Where they decide. In the gym on Monday morning when the weekend's injury is still sore, at the sports club on Saturday, or in the pharmacy buying anti-inflammatories.

What we want more of. New patients for Thursday and Friday afternoons. Not more Monday patients; we are full on Mondays.

The offer. "Sore from the weekend? Thursday and Friday afternoon appointments this week. Scan to book." Plain, and it points at the empty slots.

Channels. Paid: an A3 poster in each of the two nearest gyms, booked for eight weeks. Free: the Google Business Profile updated with new photos, and a request for a review sent to every patient who finishes a course of treatment; a sign in the clinic window saying there are afternoon appointments this week.

Monthly number. $500. Two posters at around $55 a week each come to a little under $480 a month, and the rest covers printing.

How we will know. New patient bookings for Thursday and Friday afternoons, counted from the booking system. The QR code on the poster counts scans, and the receptionist asks every new patient how they heard of us.

Review date. Eight weeks from the first Monday the posters go up.

That is the whole plan. Eight weeks later the practice has a number of Thursday and Friday bookings to compare against the eight weeks before, a scan count for each gym, and a tally from the receptionist's notebook. If the afternoons are fuller, the posters stay up and the plan moves on to the next thing. If they are not, the money moves to the sports club instead, and nothing else about the page changes.

How to use it

Pin it up. On the wall, in the van, on the fridge in the staff room. A plan in a drawer is a plan nobody follows.

Say no to anything not on the page. The radio rep, the directory listing, the sponsorship request for the raffle: if it does not match box 2 and box 5, it waits until the review date.

Change one thing at a time. If you swap the offer, the channel and the budget in the same month, you will never know which change did what. Move one box, run it for eight weeks, look at box 7.

Review on the date, not before. Two weeks in, the number will look bad. It looks bad for everybody. Wait for the date you wrote down.

Rewrite it each quarter. The page is not permanent. Box 3 in particular should change as the quiet days move around.

Where the channels come from

Most of the paid channel decisions in box 5 come down to a short list. We wrote a guide to advertising a small business in New Zealand that goes through each channel and who it suits, and one on what local advertising costs so the number in box 6 is realistic before you write it.

If box 2 says your customers are standing in another local business, that is the space we list. Listings on Pritty Ghood start from about $55 a week for a counter display or a window poster, the price on the listing is the price you pay, and there is a page for most trades and professions showing which kinds of business their customers already visit, at /advertise. If box 2 says they are at the club on Saturday, read how to sponsor a local sports club before you pick a team.