I have a lot of people ask me how to write a marketing plan that is simple to follow and cost effective to implement. The simple to follow I can help with, the cost effective to implement depends a bit on the tactics you decide on – and I’ll write about some low cost tactics in a future blog post.

As far as I am concerned, a marketing plan for a small business really doesn’t need to be more than a couple of pages in length.

Make sure you inlcude:

• Marketing goals or objectives
• Key industry trends – these should be based on a SWOT analysis that looks at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, including a bit of info about your competitors
• Your target market – these are the people you want to sell your product to
• Key messages – what do you want your customers to know about you?
• Marketing strategies and tactics appropriate for your target market (such as brochures, website, media activity, twitter)
• Budget – how much can you afford to spend?
• Action plan – when are you doing to do this stuff?
• Evaluation – what has worked, what hasn’t? Why?

Just remember a marketing plan should be a working document that is used, revised, updated, evaluated. Again and again.

I would argue that the most important part of any marketing plan is the action plan. Schedule activities into your calendar, pin them on the wall next to your desk, just make sure you make marketing a priority, and be consistent. After all, the plan won’t work if you aren’t actually doing anything!

Download a simple marketing plan template and get cracking on your marketing today!

I thought it would be fitting for my first blog post to be about goals vs New Year’s Resolutions. Particularly as I have had a goal of getting this new website written and live for about 6 months. I figured that it would be a good goal to kick for the start of the year! And now I have. Phew!

Which brings me to my point. Do you have goals or do you make resolutions? Such as the New Year Resolution? In my experience, goals are often achieved whereas resolutions tend to fall by the wayside by about the 10th of January. If not earlier.

So in 2010 I have decided not to make any NY resolutions (yes, big shock horror to those who know me ). However I have made a list of goals – that I am aiming to achieve by the end of 2010. These include the usual lose weight, do more exercise, eat more fruit and veggies, save money, as well as a few less usual – get more culture into my life, do more speaking engagements, gain a few more long term clients, plan holidays and long weekends.

To achieve these, every month my partner and I sit down together and make a series of “mini-goals” that will help us achieve our bigger picture goals. So, in the spirit of trying to be accountable to myself and anyone who reads this, my January goals are:

• lose weight – 4kg would be good
• do 1 hour of exercise a day (not achieved every day, but have done at least 30 minutes a day so far)
• relaunch my website by the end of January (big tick)
• make a new recipe once a week at least (done! and Shaun is very happy about this one!)
• read two non-fiction books – currently reading Going Rogue by Sarah Palin, next on the list is either Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith or Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk
• go to two networking functions

So now you know mine, I would love you to share your goals for January and 2010 – and how you are going with achieving them.