custom paper bag:Creating a Marketing Plan for Your Medium-Sized Business

Medium-sized businesses are often lumped into the same category as small businesses, but they could be more different! It’s crucial to have a marketing plan in place when your business reaches medium-sized (typically defined as a business with 10-250 employees) status.

Here are a few marketing musts to keep in mind if you’re a medium-sized business:

First, Define Your Goals

Before you ever start budgeting, you need to define the goal of your company. Maybe you’re comfortable where you are and simply want to maintain, or maybe you want to grow your business to a larger, bigger company. Deciding where to spend your marketing dollars will greatly depend on what you want to get out of it at the end.

targetNext, Choose Some Targets

This is where the research comes in. You need to spend some time thinking about who you want to market to, and who is already receiving your marketing well. If, for example, you want to expand your market into the baby boomer generation, you need to do some market research among that demographic to find out where they are, what they’re listening/watching and how to reach them.

Then, Come Up With a Plan

Now the fun part! Once you have a target market you need a solid, specific plan. You should have data behind every marketing decision you make and there should be very specific instructions about who’s doing what. This is the phase where you’ll come up with a reasonable yearly marketing budget, figure out your social media goals, and order promotional products.

sales pitchFinally, Execute

You’ve done all your research – hopefully even talking to consumers – and now it’s time to “pound the pavement”, so to speak. Start creating marketing content, communicating with clients on social, and attending tradeshows and conferences where you hand out your printed bags and promotional products. A marketing plan is only as good as its execution, particularly for medium and growing businesses.