Creating a Marketing Plan in 5 Easy Steps

Do you ever wonder why promoting your business sometimes feels so hard?

You have fantastic products and services that help others. There are plenty of people who are looking for what you offer.

So why is it a struggle to consistently get new clients?

Most business owners I talk to on discovery calls have a scattered marketing approach. In today’s post, I’m sharing my 5-step recipe for creating a marketing plan in a weekend!

In last week’s blog post I shared the training I did for my Get Leads & Clients Academy Members, which talked about the 3 things you can do right now to grow your business during these uncertain times; Protect, Prepare, and Position.

Creating a marketing campaign falls into the “Prepare” stage, which lays the foundation for future success! (This is why I’m always preaching about how you need to have a marketing planner that fits your work style and helps you organize your promotions and prepare yourself for success!)

Before we get started …

The prerequisite for creating ANY marketing plan is knowing who you are marketing to.

Creating an ideal client persona is the foundation upon which all your marketing is built. Does your foundation have cracks?

• Who is your ideal client?
• What problems do you solve?
• Where do they congregate?
• How are you going to reach them?

If you need to do some research in that department. Stop. Go read this article, “How to Win Clients and Influence Others with Pain Points,” and then come back.

You must be crystal clear on who it is you serve and the urgent problem you solve for them, or your marketing plan won’t work.

So let’s break down the recipe to create a marketing plan into 5 simple steps.

Ingredients for Creating a Marketing Plan to Get Leads and Clients Online:

1. Targeted traffic
2. Marketing funnel
3. Conversion mechanism
4. Lead magnet
5. Irresistible offer

5 Steps: Creating a Marketing Plan

1. Create Your Irresistible Offer:

We need to begin with the end in mind; your offer. What are you selling? This can be either a service you provide or a product. Design an offer that tick’s the box on all three of the items below:

• Irresistible: In times like these, we don’t want to focus on selling a yacht to people needing a lifeboat. What are your clients needing now? For example, if you’re a financial advisor and have a “Retirement Freedom” plan, your clients may be more enticed by a “Rapid Retirement Rescue” package. (It will most likely include the same steps as your regular offer, but repackage it for today’s market.)
• Scaleable: If possible, I recommend that your offer is something you can scale. It should take the same amount of work for you to deliver it to 100 people or one person.
• Profitable: I also recommend your offer is high enough priced, that you can afford to use paid ads to promote it. (Don’t skimp on this if you want to create a marketing plan that can run on autopilot!)

2. Design Your Lead Magnet:

Your lead magnet is a free offer you give to your leads in exchange for their email address. This is the front door of your marketing funnel. You will want your lead magnet to:

• Be a Solution: Your lead magnet needs to solve an urgent problem your potential clients are dealing with. Target a problem that is causing them pain or stress in some part of their life and business.
• Provide a Quick Win: Giving them a quick win will build their confidence in you, your process, and themselves. They need to believe “this will work for me.” Helping them to achieve a quick win is the easiest way to show them it will!
• Leave a Gap: This step is critical. It is often why some lead magnets work, and others don’t. You want your lead magnet to solve a problem and give them a quick win. You also want to make sure you’re not giving away too much. Think of your lead magnet as a bandaid solution. It’s going to give them some relief but it won’t take away their problem completely. Many business owners tend to provide so much value that the client thinks they can figure it out on their own. When this happens, they think they don’t need your service or product. To avoid this trap, I recommend you only give them the why and the what in your lead magnet. They need to purchase your offer to get the “how.”

3. Create Your Conversion Mechanism:

How are you going to turn your new leads into paying clients? This is called your conversion mechanism. There are lots of ways to do this, the most popular among my clients who provide a high-ticket product or service is a sales call. A webinar or video sales letter may be a great option in other situations.

Let’s talk about the sales call for a minute … don’t just hop on a call with people without a plan to make that call both valuable to them and profitable for you! Ask questions, dig deep, and then give them your prescription to help them get the results they are after!

4. Build Your Marketing Funnel:

This is one of the most common mistakes people make – they work hard to drive traffic to a website that doesn’t have a funnel to convert that traffic into clients. When developing a marketing plan for today’s online environment, you need a funnel. A basic lead generation funnel consists of 3 pages …

1. Landing Page – This is the page where you tell people about your free offer and give them a form they can use to enter their name and email.
2. Confirmation/Sales Page – This is the page they are taken to immediately after opting in. You want to maximize this page by giving them the next step they should take to solve their problem. You could include an invitation to book a call with you, send them to a webinar registration, or give them an offer to buy a product.
3. Thank You Page – This is the page where you give your new lead the free gift they just requested. At the same time as they’re redirected to the confirmation page, trigger an automated email from your email marketing platform to give them a link to this page.

5. Targeted Traffic:

This is where a lot of people struggle. They go to all the hard work and effort of creating amazing offers. They design a lead magnet and plan their conversion method. And they build their funnel. Then, they sit back and wait for it to work.

A marketing funnel is not an “if you build it they will come” project. You need to fill your funnel with visitors, which we refer to as website traffic. Building a funnel without a steady stream of traffic is like never putting gas in your car. You’re going to be frustrated it’s not getting you anywhere.

My recommendation is to focus on two ways to generate traffic.

1. First, you need a leveraged way to drive traffic to your website. I recommend you start with a simple Facebook ad! It will allow you to promote your lead magnet to your targeted audience of ideal clients. That way you’re able to keep your funnel full even if you’re busy doing other things.
2. Second, nurture your new traffic and move them deeper into your funnel with informative and helpful content. This can include blog posts, social media posts, videos, email marketing, etc. Our ever so popular Marketing Planner and Live Marketing Planning Parties will help you organize your content, plan your marketing, and track your metrics!

So there you have it! Our 5 Step Process for Creating a Marketing Plan.

If creating a marketing plan that includes a website and funnel has been on your to-do list for a while …

Book a clarity call today!