It’s so important to review your marketing strategy at the start of each year to ensure you’re hitting the mark and reaching the right people.

But this doesn’t have to be a lengthy, complicated process. In fact, you can do this in a couple of hours with a super-simple one page PDF.

The one page marketing plan has been around for a while. And for good reason. It’s a simple, straight-to-the-point way to guide your ecommerce marketing for the year.

It also helps as a trigger to review your biz goals and direction and make sure your business plans and marketing are in alignment.

While this is a simple process, you’ll want to set aside two-ish hours to give yourself time to think and review.

As you do this process you might find your business has evolved from where it was 12 months ago.

For me, my business niche is now much more defined. Meanwhile, a client of mine found their customer base had shifted slightly and that necessitated a new focus for their marketing.

This is also a time to review your products (and services if you offer those too). Maybe one product has been outselling all the rest and you want to build on that. Or your customers could be asking for a certain type of product (of course you don’t have to sell something just because people are asking for it – if it doesn’t align with you – but it’s good to consider).

Once you’ve completed your one-page marketing plan stick it up in your office so you can refer back to it. When an opportunity comes up or you’re considering a certain type of marketing or advertising you can refer back to your marketing plan and decide if it aligns with your goals and purpose or not.

How to Create Your 2016 One Page Marketing Plan

To help you out I’ve created a free downloadable content marketing plan. You can either save it to your computer and type into the boxes, or print it out and handwrite it.

Click here to download the free content marketing plan and make your 2016 awesome.

Purpose

Your purpose is the most important part of your plan. Your biz purpose is more than just what you do. It’s also WHY you are in business and who you SERVE.

Write down 1-2 sentences on your business purpose/mission.

Goals

Decide on your top three goals for the year. You might have other goals, but I think it’s important to focus on only a few to ensure you actually make it happen.

Make sure these goals a specific and results-based. For example, ‘grow our sales isn’t a goal’ but ‘increase sales by 50% and reduce expenses by 20%’ is.

Products

What do you sell? What would you like to add into the mix in 2016? Do your products make sense as a whole, or is it kind of a mish-mash of items?

Customers

Who buys (or you want to buy) your products? Take a look through your previous sales for the year to get an idea of who has actually purchased from you.

You could also take a look at your followers on social media to get an idea of the people you’re attracting with your current marketing. Are these people your ideal customers or do you need to shift either your target or message?

Competitors

I don’t think you should worry too much about what other businesses are or are not doing. But it is important to be aware of who else is in your market, especially if it’s a particularly saturated one.

Our Difference

After you’ve reviewed your market, ask yourself what makes you different. Is it how you make your products, your story, your customer service or your community? Identify this to highlight in your marketing and attract more customers who’ll buy from you because they love your message, not because you’re the cheapest (or whatever-est).

Marketing Sources

What channels are you/will you use in your marketing mix? Blogging, email, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook?

Are there any channels you’d like to explore in 2016 too? I’m adding Snapchat to my list as I’m hearing a lot of buzz about it for businesses.

Marketing Budget

Include how much you’ll spend (or could spend) on marketing in 2016. This could either be a dollar figure (if you’re fairly confident how much you’ll make) or a percentage figure of your total sales.

Also include a budget for the time you’ll spend on marketing. This is time you won’t be creating products and doing other tasks directly related to sales so it’s super-important to make time for this and track the return on your time investment.

Action Plan

Of course you won’t be able to write down everything you need to do for the year. But add in the big things you need to make happen. Perhaps you need to hire someone to help you out, or you want to rebrand of your online store. You could also include any training you’d like to take this year (so when it pops up you can jump on it confidently).

You can get the free downloadable one-page ecommerce marketing plan by clicking here (no opt in required). And to get more posts like these delivered straight to your inbox, pop your details into the box below.