A one-year marketing plan for a small business
In a small business a marketing plan is either missing or forty pages long and never opened again. A working version fits on one sheet and answers four questions: how much money is needed, where customers will come from, what we do each quarter, and how we will know we are on track.
The plan is built from the number of clients, not from a budget figure: how many clients you need, your conversion from request, what a request costs — the budget follows. Then it is spread across quarters with seasonality in mind and split between channels. Revise it quarterly against actual numbers, not once a year on instinct.
In this article6 sections
Step 1. Start with money, not with channels
A plan starts not with «let us launch ads» but with the revenue figure you want. That figure is then unrolled backwards into customers, enquiries and budget. This calculation takes fifteen minutes and immediately shows whether the goal is realistic.
An example. The goal is an extra $60,000 of revenue in a year at an average order value of $300. That means 200 new customers, about 17 a month.
- From revenue to customersDivide the annual goal by the average order value. That gives the number of customers you need.
- From customers to enquiriesDivide by your conversion rate. If one in four enquiries buys, 17 customers require about 68 enquiries a month.
- From enquiries to budgetMultiply by your cost per enquiry. At $15 that is roughly $1,000 a month on traffic.
- Sanity-check itIf the figure exceeds what you are willing to pay, the goal has to come down, the order value has to go up, or conversion has to improve. Better to learn that now than in May.
If you do not know your enquiry-to-customer conversion, that is the first thing to find out. Without it the whole plan rests on a guess, and being wrong by a factor of two here means being wrong by a factor of two in the entire budget.
Step 2. Sort channels by speed
Channels split into fast and slow, and in the plan they belong in different places. Fast ones bring money now; slow ones lower the cost of a customer by the end of the year. The mistake is expecting fast results from slow channels and being disappointed.
| Type | Channels | Role in the plan | When to assess |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fast | Advertising, maps | Hold the flow of enquiries from month one | Monthly |
| Medium | AI search, reviews, site conversion | Deliver over a 2–4 month horizon | Quarterly |
| Slow | SEO, content, reputation | Lower the cost of a customer by year end | Every six months |
Step 3. Break the year into quarters
A year is too large a horizon to manage. A month is too small to see the effect of slow channels. A quarter fits: long enough for an effect, short enough to correct course.
Quarter one: foundation and fast money
- Put the site in order: speed, mobile version, forms, prices.
- Fill in the map listings and start collecting reviews.
- Switch on advertising for a narrow set of high-value queries.
- Set up tracking: every enquiry with a source, every sale with an amount.
Quarter two: scale what worked
- Switch off unprofitable parts of the advertising and expand the profitable ones.
- Start building service pages for queries that proved themselves in advertising.
- Work on site conversion: that is usually where the cheapest growth sits.
- Sort out enquiry handling: response time, call script, record keeping.
Quarter three: organic starts working
- Build up content on topics that bring traffic.
- Add visibility in AI answers — the foundation for it is already in place.
- Recalculate the cost of a customer per channel and reallocate budget.
- Check that positions have not dropped after algorithm updates.
Quarter four: retention and planning
- Work on bringing customers back — several times cheaper than acquiring new ones.
- Prepare for the season, if you have one.
- Year-end results per channel and a plan for next year.
Step 4. Set the control points
A plan without checkpoints turns into a good intention. Three regular questions, asked at the right rhythm, are enough.
- Monthly: how many enquiries, what an enquiry cost, how many reached payment.
- Quarterly: is the cost of a customer coming down, is the organic share growing, were the quarter's tasks completed.
- Annually: which channel brought the most money, not the most traffic.
It is worth adding one rule: if a metric worsens two months running, that is a reason to investigate rather than wait. One month can be chance; two is a trend.
What a finished plan looks like on one sheet
| Section | What to write |
|---|---|
| Goal | Revenue, number of customers, timeframe |
| Economics | Average order value, conversion, acceptable cost per customer |
| Channels | What we launch, in what order, with what budget |
| Quarters | 3–5 tasks each, no more |
| Control | Which figures we watch and how often |
| Risks | What we do if the season fails or clicks double in price |
Anything that does not fit in this table usually does not get done either. A forty-page plan is beautiful right up until the first working Monday.
What to do when the plan diverges from reality
It will diverge — that is normal. What matters is not that the plan failed but how quickly you noticed and what you changed.
- Fewer enquiries than planned but cheap — increase volume in the channel that works.
- Enough enquiries but expensive — work on the funnel, not the budget.
- Plenty of enquiries, few sales — the problem is not marketing but sales or price.
- Everything below plan and no clear reason — stop and check your tracking. It often turns out some enquiries are simply not being recorded.
Frequent questions
What percentage of revenue should go to marketing?
5–15% is often quoted, but that is an average temperature. It is more accurate to work from the acceptable cost of a customer: how much you can pay for one and how many you need.
What if the budget only covers one channel?
Take a fast one — advertising or maps, depending on whether people search for you by location. Slow channels require several months of financial runway.
Should the plan be rewritten if something goes wrong?
Absolutely. A plan is a hypothesis, not a promise. It should be corrected quarterly against actual figures, otherwise you spend the year following an outdated map.
Who should write the plan — the contractor or the owner?
The goal and the economics — the owner, who knows the order value, the margin and the business plans. Channels and tasks — the contractor. A plan written without the owner usually optimises traffic rather than profit.
How do we plan when the business is seasonal?
From the season, not evenly by month. Most of the budget goes to the peak and the two months before it; out of season keep targeted advertising and use the time for preparation: pages, content, reviews.
What matters more in a plan — channels or figures?
The figures. Channels change, but the money goal, the average order value and the acceptable cost per customer set the frame within which any channel is judged the same way.
The materials answer general questions. We will look at your specific case — free and without obligation.