Costs
Part of Getting Small Business Marketing Strategy Right the First Time
How to Build a Small Business Marketing Strategy
Small business marketing strategy questions cover customers, positioning, channels, budgets, measurement, agency decisions, exclusions, and review cycles.
What to take away
- A usable strategy fits on one page and records nine decisions, from priority customer to review date.
- Build it in that order. Channels come last, after the offer and the economics.
- Set the budget from contribution per sale. A widely repeated band of 5 to 10 percent of gross revenue is a sanity check, not a target.
- Give every channel one job, one owner and a stop date.
- Keep domains, ad accounts, analytics, creative files and customer data in your own name.
What belongs in a marketing strategy document
One page, nine entries. A missing entry gets decided later by a supplier or a slow month. Use the checklist below to confirm coverage before writing prose.
Marketing Strategy Checklist
- Business objective
- Priority customer and problem
- Market boundary
- Competitors and alternatives
- Positioning and offer
- Proof and customer path
- Channel roles and capacity
- Budget, measurement, risks, review
- Priority customerone named segment, plus the people you exclude.
- Triggerthe event that starts a purchase.
- Offerwhat is sold, the price, the promise.
- Contributioncash left from a sale after direct costs.
- Channelsone job and one owner for each.
- Proofreviews, licences, insurance, guarantees, samples.
- Capacityjobs you can deliver in a normal week.
- Budget capcash, owner hours, stop date.
- Review datethe day you cut or keep a channel.
Build it in six steps
- Gather evidence. Pull your last 50 sales, three competitors' prices and ten customer conversations. The SBA's market research and competitive analysis guidance lists what to cover: demand, location, saturation, pricing and direct customer evidence.
- Pick one segment and write two exclusions. Age and income alone rarely explain a purchase. Name the problem, the trigger and the service fit.
- Fix the offer and the price first. Write the promise as one sentence a customer would repeat. Test it against the competitor and customer evidence you collected, because no channel rescues an offer nobody wants.
- Compute contribution per sale. Subtract materials, delivery, card fees and commission. That number caps what you can pay to win a customer.
- Choose channels last, with one job eachdiscovery, evaluation, purchase, follow-up or retention.
- Write the review date and the stop rule before spending. A channel that misses its number by then gets cut.
Setting a marketing budget from contribution
Percent-of-revenue rules float around at 5 to 10 percent of gross revenue. Treat them as a sanity check and start from contribution instead.
Worked example. A carpet cleaner averages $185 a job and keeps $110 after chemicals, fuel and card fees.
She caps acquisition at 25 percent of contribution, or $27 per new customer. Forty new jobs a month means about $1,080 in paid budget. Owner time of five hours a week sits outside that cash figure and gets logged.
Write the ceiling down and hold it, which is what our working brief on small business marketing budgets is for.
Choosing channels by job, reach and maintenance
Three tests decide whether a channel earns a place.
- Jobdoes it reach the customer at the stage you need?
- Reachcan it deliver enough volume at your acquisition ceiling?
- Maintenancewho runs it, and can they keep it up for two quarters?
A channel that fails one test stays out. Rank the survivors by the cheapest test that could kill them.
Most local businesses need three: discovery, proof and follow-up. More than three usually makes the owner the bottleneck. Two channels run properly beat five run badly, and a stop rule protects the budget when one stalls.
Example: one-page strategy for a two-van carpet cleaner
A filled strategy for a two-van business, sized for a landlord-heavy market and a $1,100 monthly cap.
One-page strategy for a two-van carpet cleaner
- Priority customer
- landlords within 15 miles who manage three or more units.
- Exclusions
- single-home owners shopping only on price, and commercial contracts above 5,000 sq ft.
- Trigger
- tenant turnover or a failed inspection.
- Offer
- $185 for three rooms and a hall, booked within 48 hours, stain guarantee.
- Contribution
- $110 a job. Acquisition ceiling: $27.
- Channels
- local search ads for discovery, texted review requests for proof, a 12-month reminder for repeat work. Postcards rejected this year.
- Capacity
- 22 jobs a week. Budget cap: $1,100 a month. Review date: 1 October. Stop rule: any channel under 12 booked jobs a quarter.
Paid acquisition only pays back when the second and third jobs arrive, which is why retention built around cohorts rather than averages belongs on the same page.
Hiring an agency once the plan exists
Hire when the plan exists and you can name the outcome. The FTC's advertising FAQs for small businesses put claim substantiation and endorsement rules on the advertiser, not the contractor. You approve every claim, so you keep the records.
Ask how media is bought and what the retainer covers. This overview of advertising agencies explains media buying and agency roles, which helps you price a retainer against in-house learning time. Compare the retainer with the cost of doing the work yourself, your own hours included.
Keep the exit clean. Domains, ad accounts, analytics and creative files stay in your name, and audience data leaves with you.
