If you’ve been putting off your marketing plan, this 4-step process will help you get it done. But before we dive in, I need to clear up an all-too-common misconception about marketing.
Are You Trying To Answer The Wrong Questions?
I bet you and your team are smart, maybe even smarter than me. But here’s the deal. It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you’re focused on answering the wrong question.
Several years ago we surveyed 155 business owners and asked them, “What is your #1 question about digital marketing?” There were a lot of different responses, but the vast majority were asking the same thing: “What is the one tactic that will get the best ROI?”
I still hear this question constantly when talking to business owners, and chances are you’ve wondered the same thing.
If that’s the question driving your planning, you’re starting in the wrong place. No single tactic will give you the best ROI on its own. Marketing works as a system, not a collection of independent bets. The goal of your marketing plan isn’t to find one “Holy Grail” tactic. It’s to build a system of marketing channels that work together to drive predictable growth.
That’s where The Growth Formula comes in: Traffic × Conversion × Customer Value = Growth. Every marketing tactic you invest in should be working one of those three levers. Your plan should tell you which levers need the most attention and what you’re doing to improve each one.
With that foundation in place, here are the 4 steps to create your marketing plan.
1. Define Your Goals
The most critical step in the planning process is to define your goals. Not just any goals, though. We need SMART goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Every goal must meet all five criteria.
Specific. Too often I hear business owners set goals like “more leads” and “more sales.” That’s not a real goal. How many more leads? How much growth would you be happy with this year? How many more phone calls would you like to receive each month? If you already set your goals, review them to make sure they are specific.
Measurable. Your goals must be measurable so you know if you’re moving closer or further away from achieving them. With digital marketing, you can use Google Analytics and your CRM to measure most of your goals.
Achievable. It’s fun to set lofty goals and dream big, but make sure they are achievable within your timeframe. Goals should excite and motivate you and your team, not demoralize you.
Relevant. Does your goal even matter? If you achieve it, how does it impact your bottom line? Ranking on the first page of Google for “new york city pediatric dentist” is specific, measurable, and probably achievable, but it’s not relevant for a dentist who doesn’t work with children.
Time-Bound. Set a clear deadline. It’s amazing how something as simple as a deadline can make all the difference when it comes to accomplishing your goals.
2. Work Backward Using The Growth Formula
This is where most marketing plans fall apart. Business owners set a revenue goal but never connect it to the specific marketing numbers they need to hit each month. The Growth Formula gives you a simple way to do that.
Start with your revenue goal and work backward through each part of the formula.
Let’s say your goal is to generate $1,000,000 in sales over the next 12 months. Here’s how the math works:
Customer Value. What is your average sale? If your average customer value is $500, then you need 2,000 sales to hit $1M. That’s about 167 sales per month.
Conversion. What percentage of your leads turn into sales? If your sales conversion rate is 10%, then you need 1,670 leads per month to generate 167 sales.
Traffic. How many website visitors do you need to generate 1,670 leads? If your website converts 10% of visitors into leads, then you need about 16,700 visitors per month.
See what we just did? We started with one big revenue goal and worked backward through The Growth Formula to find the specific monthly targets for Traffic, Conversion, and Customer Value. Now instead of a vague plan to “grow the business,” you have concrete numbers: 16,700 visitors, 1,670 leads, 167 sales, $1M in revenue.
These become your key performance indicators (KPIs). Track them every month, and you’ll know exactly whether your marketing is on pace or falling behind.
This also tells you where to focus your marketing investments. If you’re already getting enough traffic but your leads aren’t converting, you have a Conversion problem, not a Traffic problem. If your conversion rate is strong but you don’t have enough visitors, you need to invest in the Traffic lever. Diagnosing which lever needs attention is the difference between a plan that works and one that wastes money on the wrong things.
3. Reality-Check Your Numbers
The third step is to pressure-test your KPIs. Is it realistic to generate over 16,000 website visitors using your current traffic sources? Are your conversion rate assumptions based on historical data, or are they wishful thinking?
To answer these questions, you’ll need to do some research. The most important question is whether there is enough demand in your market to support your traffic goals. Use Google’s Keyword Planner to see how many people are searching for your products or services each month. If there are 100,000 monthly searches for your core terms, getting 16,700 visitors is plausible through a combination of SEO, Google Ads, and other channels. If there are only 5,000 monthly searches, you need to either revise your goals or find additional traffic sources beyond search.
Unless you’re an expert in search engine marketing, I recommend talking to someone who is to see if your goals are realistic. The same goes for other traffic sources like email, social media, and partnerships.
If your goals turn out to be unrealistic, go back to Step 1 and revise them. Better to find this out now than to invest an entire year chasing numbers you can’t hit.
4. Assign Responsibilities and Set Your Budget
The final step is to determine who on your team is going to be responsible for implementing each part of the plan and measuring progress each month. If you have big growth plans, keep in mind that you may need to hire an agency, bring someone in-house, or outsource to hit your goals.
You’ll also need to set a marketing budget that matches your goals. The KPIs from Step 2 will help with this. If you know you need 16,700 visitors per month and you’re planning to use Google Ads as one of your traffic sources, you can estimate the ad spend required based on your industry’s average cost per click. The same logic applies to every channel in your plan.
A plan without a budget is a wish list. A plan with a budget and clear responsibilities is something your team can actually execute.
Need Help with Your Marketing Plan?
If you want help building a marketing plan based on real numbers and The Growth Formula, we can help. Request a free strategy call, and we’ll walk through your goals, your current performance, and where the biggest opportunities are.
