Having a good plan is always the best strategy for small and local business, but let’s be real. The time it takes to create a plan that is thorough and actionable is just not always in the schedule. That’s where we come in! We’ve come up with a few steps that you can take to prepare yourself for a really good strategy, mostly focused on social media. You can take this strategy and run with it if you have the time and man-power (and did we mention time?) to do so or you can call us with all of this information and we’ll create a plan for you as well as help to execute it.
Step 1: Identify your ideal customer
Knowing who you want to market to will help to lead the whole strategy. While marketing is certainly about sharing who you are as a company, the real clients can be found when you connect with them properly
Step 2: Define your biggest marketing goal
Most of the time, more clients and more sales sit in the top spot for marketing goals but not always. You may want to share more about your philanthropy or introduce yourself to a new area. Whatever the goal is, you want to make it very specific. How much do you want to grow exactly? How many new clients do you want to sign this month? How many more cups of coffee do you want to sell each week? How many times do you want to post on social media platforms each month?
Step 3: Choose the 2–3 channels that make the most sense
You own a small business. Even if you’re growing, you can’t do it all. Focusing on just a few channels to run ads or to set up pop-up shops or to create content for will make it more achievable and easier to track and measure. Focus on what you can do and what you can fit in to your busy day.
Step 4: Decide what content you’ll create
Are you focusing on video, on educational pieces or something else? Depending on what you’d like to create, you may need to purchase equipment, take some trainings or gather content for your marketing agency to use. Plus having a plan ahead of time will help you to round up staff or gather product or whatever else you might need to be creative.
Step 5: Create a realistic posting schedule
What do your goals look like? If the goal is simply to post more to Instagram, then look at what you’ve been doing and try to add one post per week or make one more video per month. Maybe that schedule works out to posting on Mondays or every other day or always on Friday. Regardless of what it is, come up with a realistic schedule that you can stick to. And keep in mind the effort it takes to get ready. If you need to write a few blogs first, work that into your schedule.
Step 6: Set a marketing budget
Your marketing budget, especially if you want to run on-line ads, should be very specific. If you want to spend $500 a month, stick to it for a while. One ad won’t suddenly start bringing in a steady stream of new clients. You’ll need to test and adjust and review as the time goes on. So pick a budget you can commit to for at least 6 months at the bare minimum. You’ll also want to consider the employee time it may take to implement this strategy as well as costs associated with hiring marketing experts or an agency.
Step 7: Decide what you’ll measure
Marketing will often bring in changes to your data that you weren’t expecting. If your marketing strategy is hoping to bring in more coffee drinkers to your shop, but you end up selling more bakery items, is that still a win? Maybe you get several more online “browsers” but only some increase in sales. You’ll want to determine what you want to measure and then how to adjust based in the data you start to receive.
Step 8: Put it on a calendar
Our FREE Fall 2026 Content Calendar will give you a great starting point for ideas and scheduling your posts. You can use it as part of a fully robust marketing strategy or just focus on your social media marketing for now. Either way, we hope you’ll find it useful.
The Marketing Experts at Green T Design are ready to support your small business with all of your marketing needs. This plan is simple and general, so we understand that you may want something tailored more to your industry, location and particular goals. Reach out so we can schedule an initial meeting, get to know your business better and be able to create a well-rounded marketing plan, just for you.
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Free Content Calendar
