Tips for Building Your Local Marketing Plan

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When days get hectic, it’s easy to put off taking the time to develop your club’s marketing plan. However, marketing is an investment in your business that should not be overlooked.

Taking the time to build your marketing plan will help set the parameters to define your business’ success and set the course to help stay focused on results.

To get started, consider a few questions to help determine what makes your business different:

What are you offering?

Who’s your target and why would they be interested in your services?

How are you able to reach your audience?

How do you compare to your competition? Identify business strengths and weaknesses.

With these inputs you’ll be able to develop a strategy to make your business stand out, find and reach your target audience with relevant messages to drive interest, and get consumers to convert over time.

Dedicate a percentage of sales revenue towards your marketing budget. Based on your objectives and budget, determine the best channels to reach your target audience. Don’t isolate your marketing efforts to one channel, but consider a mix of both traditional and non-traditional channels.

Once channels have been set, determine the tactic messaging and start building your in-market calendar for launch. Consider dedicating a small amount of your monthly budget to testing new ideas or messaging to help gain learnings and understand what resonates.

Most importantly, be sure to be focused on mapping the marketing results back to your goals to continuously evolve and optimize your marketing efforts. Identifying what’s working in your marketing plan and what could be paused will help strengthen your efforts long-term. A strong foundation will help contribute to your future success.

Kate Weis is the marketing director of franchise strategy and support for Crunch.