Whether it is taking time off for the public holidays or a longer summer break. Don’t forget to post your holiday trading hours on your website, social media and search engines.  How much advance notice to give your customers depends on your business.  For example, a hairdresser might need to tell their customers eight weeks in advance depending on how regular their clients repeat book.  As a general rule of thumb, give at least twice as long as the time period you are taking off. If you are taking four weeks holiday, then give at least two weeks advance notice with your changed trading hours.  

1. The What?

“The What?” section contains most of the work.  This is where you need to do a bit of thinking and research about your small business.  I have broken this down into four sub-sections:

1.1 Your business vision and mission statement – if you don’t have a business vision, think about why you started your business and what you want to see your business achieve.  These help guide your business internally and gives you and your staff direction. Business Queensland has some great help on this. 

1.2 Your Business Goals – These are generally the big stuff!  e.g. next year to achieve 10 new clients, or 5% growth in revenue.

1.3 The Analysis of your Business.  There are a few ways of analysing your business.  Consider the following:

• A SWOT Analysis:
  What are the business STRENGTHS? – you want to consolidate the strengths and grow these strengths in the business.
  What are the business WEAKNESSES? – you want to minimise or eliminate from the business.
  What are the business OPPORTUNITIES? – you want to grow and develop for your business.
  What are the business THREATS? – if they happen, you want to have a plan in place to mitigate.
• Research – Include other business or industry research you have. For example: looking at Australian Bureau of Statistics data for your industry and your local area.
• A Competitor Analysis – what is it that they do good, not so good, and…are there any gaps or opportunities in the marketplace.

1.4 The Assessment  

After your marketing analysis comes the marketing assessment.  Your small business marketing strategy must assess the ideas and opportunities that you just identified from all the analysis work that you have done.

Use the SMART Principles technique – it’s an easy way to quickly assess some of those opportunities you found:

• S – Are the opportunities specific and clearly defined?
• M – Are the opportunities measurable against your targets and business goals?
• A – Are they achievable and likely to succeed? What are the likely costs?
• R – Are they relevant to the business goals?
• T – How much time will it take to implement some of these opportunities?

2. THE WHY?

After doing all the hard analysis and assessment work, it’s important to make sure you know what is unique about your business products or services that will make people want to buy them.

Somewhere in that analysis work you should have been able to identify what is different about your business to others: What need or want does your product or service fulfill? Why will I buy from you rather than your competitors?  What is different about your business that will be hard for a competitor to copy?  This is called your UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION (your USP) and it is key to your business success. 

3. THE HOW?

You should now have your What and your WHY sorted.  Well done!  Now you’ll want to prioritise and focus some of the opportunities you have found for your small business.  Choose one-to-three of the top opportunities.

To do this, consider the business impacts: What will it cost (return on investment); Will I need more resource; How will it impact operations and customer service?

You may have identified a very large opportunity, however this is where you need to get REAL because to achieve that opportunity you need to also consider all the impacts and consequences.

Map out how the customer journey and the customer experience will look for each of these opportunities.  Consider how the business will create customer loyalty and value?                    

4. THE WHO?

Who are my target customers for my products or services?  You might think EVERYONE is my target customer….EVERYONE is not the correct answer!  Everyone needs food and water (and we can even break that down).

Let’s say you sell bricks. Not everyone wants to buy bricks…but if I’m a young couple looking to build my first home, I might be interested in bricks.  One of your target customers may be young couples. 

You may sell larger block bricks – suitable for building retaining walls.  One of your target customers may be landscapers.  Get the picture?

You may have seen other small business create an avatar or persona of their customers.  This is a more detailed description of your customers.  You may name them or base your avatar on someone you know.  You would include key demographics about your avatar, their likes, dislikes, motivations etc. 

5. THE WHEN?

This is where that Marketing Plan comes in.  It’s also called a Communication Plan because it’s all about: WHEN should I communicate to my customers?

It details the timeline of when your awesome strategy will be delivered.  It goes into the next level of detail.

Marketing plans can be very detailed, though I find this really depends on how much time you have.  Typically, the larger the marketing team the more detailed your plan.  Consider adding: the target customer group, the key message to these customers, how your product will solve their problem, what specific marketing channel or media will be used and when during the customer journey.

I would strongly recommend you measure your results for each campaign.  This way you know what worked…or didn’t work well and you can always adjust your communication plan as you need