A lot of small businesses realize that marketing is essential to their business, but many often don’t have the time and experience to put together a formal marketing plan.

Here’s a template for a 2-page marketing plan that provides a clear framework to help focus your marketing efforts.

If you’ve ever had a “creative block” trying to come up with a new marketing idea, here are some simple exercises to get you unstuck.

Here are some questions you should ask to determine if a media opportunity really makes sense for your business.

All strategies are made up of these 5 basic parts.

One of the keys to developing effective marketing is to create communications that speak specifically to your customers. The more relevant it is to their unique viewpoints, needs, challenges, goals and life experience, the more likely they'll believe your message.

We used to focus all of our energy on trying to develop ads that would communicate a singular message about our core value proposition in an intriguing and compelling way. If we could do that, people would buy.

Any economist will tell you that scarcity can increase demand for the product and typically the price. We want what we can’t have. The fact that we can’t have something for some reason makes us want it more.

The Bayes’ theorem is a statistical model that describes the probability of an event, based on conditions that might be related to the event.

Strategy is defined by the obstacles we must overcome. If you have a goal you haven’t accomplished yet, there must be something stopping you from it, even if it’s just laziness. Use this exercise to outline each obstacle individually and identify ways to address them.

We can scour the web for countless reviews, product details, FAQs on performance. The “long tail” ensures that there are products for a near infinite variety for any given type of product or service. Finding our absolute ideal offering for us is now an impossibly daunting task.

Most people in business are familiar with a SWOT Analysis. You list the internal Strengths and Weaknesses of your company, as well as the external Opportunities and Threats. It’s a useful tool in planning. However, it’s sometimes used in place of planning. Try this modified version to develop a more actionable plan

I’m sure you’ve seen it before. A new ad or logo or marketing campaign is being presented to a room full of people. The people nod their heads and smile throughout the entire presentation.

There are always numerous things vying for our attention. The problem is figuring out how to deal with all of them. Use this technique to help you prioritize and not feel so overwhelmed.

No project goes perfectly smoothly all the time. So it’s better to be prepared for issues beforehand and plan accordingly. Use this basic model for any major project.

Unless you’re the market leader in your category and region, it may seem impossible to beat the “big guys.” They have more money, more awareness, more resources to blow you out of the water with any type of marketing promotion that you can do. But every giant has their weaknesses.

There is one proven business strategy that has consistently worked time and time again. It is a strategy that has created the most important innovations for centuries.

Think about how long it takes you to cook a meal from start to finish. Even “30 minute meals” usually end up taking nearly an hour, in actual practice. Imagine cooking 10 to 100 various dishes at the same time and you have to get it out in less than half an hour or people start complaining.

Looking at things from a different point of view is always a good practice to have. It allows you to be more open to innovative ideas and helps you to identify new ways to improve yourself.

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