Marketing plans are known for being lengthy and rigid, but they don’t have to be. Vivian created a modern marketing plan designed to be flexible and functional, and we want to share it with you, small business owners!
This week on the S.O.B. (Small Owned Business) Marketing podcast, Vivian and I are discussing marketing plans, why your small business needs one, and walking you through OUR marketing plan process step-by-step.
DOWNLOAD OUR MARKETING PLAN TEMPLATE HERE: https://www.TheSeasonedMarketer.com/plan
Marketing HOT TAKE: Marketing plans do not have to be lengthy or for the entire year! Creating a quarterly marketing plan can help you stay on track and actually reference it. Agree? Let us know in the comments!
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Chapters:
00:00 Welcome to our Marketing Cult! Please Leave Us a Review
06:46 The Importance of a Marketing Plan
09:07 Creating a Flexible Marketing Plan
11:25 Identifying Marketing Initiatives
15:45 Fixed vs Variable Marketing Initiatives
24:43 TLDL; A Modern Marketing Plan for Small Businesses
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Marketing Plan Download: https://www.TheSeasonedMarketer.com/plan
Building a Marketing Budget For Your Small Business in 2026:
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Vivian: This ain't your granny's marketing plan. You guys, I'm so stoked.
Chelsea: I'm going to stop letting Vivian do the intros. I asked her, do you want to do the intro? Do you want me to do it? She's like, no, no, no, I got it.
Vivian: I'll do it. This ain't your pappy's marketing plan.
Chelsea: What is happening?
Vivian: I'm pretty stoked to talk about today's topic, Chels, if you can't tell.
Chelsea: No, I can tell.
*Intro* Chelsea: Hey everyone and welcome to the S.O.B. Marketing podcast. Where we celebrate to S.O.B. you are, and if you haven't figured it out yet - we mean Small Owned Business, we don't mean S.O.B...
Vivian: Listen, we know that as a small business owner you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you, if we're being honest with each other I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything.
Chelsea: Our commitment here at the S.O.B. Marketing podcast is to give you the real talk, what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, and promoting your business. And then what doesn't really work.
Vivian: And Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real.
*Beginning of Episode*
Vivian: Before we hop into the topic, which if you haven't guessed is marketing plans.
Chelsea: What if it wasn't? What if it was something else?
Vivian: And I had just started it like that?
Chelsea: I know, right?
Vivian: We just want to remind you guys, if you love these marketing conversations that we're bringing to you every single week, buy us a coffee.
Chelsea: Caffeinate me.
Vivian: Yeah, caffeinate Chelsea. Go to buymeacoffee.com/sobmarketing and donate $5. So coffees are obviously a metaphor. It's just a way for you to help the podcast and allow us to continue bringing you this information that helps you promote your small business. Chelsea loves to be quote unquote caffeinated. We're not buying coffee you guys. We'll use the funds for podcasting stuff.
Chelsea: Please, I can't, I would have a heart attack.
Vivian: Yeah. She, she's not allowed to be caffeinated. I've seen her can't caffeinate a handful of times and it got weird.
Chelsea: Real fast.
Vivian: All right. So Chels, what is today's topic?
Chelsea: Today we're talking about marketing plans and before we get any further, reminder, we have TLDL.
So TLDL stands for Too Long Didn't Listen, if you're new here. At the end of every episode, well, almost every episode, I give you a brief summary of what we talked about because, we get it, you're small business owners, you guys are busy. Sometimes you can't listen to an entire conversation. So you can skip ahead, listen to that summary. But when you get the chance, come back and listen to this entire conversation.
But yeah, today we are talking about marketing plans. Do not turn this off, okay? Marketing plans are important and they are helpful and you need them, unfortunately.
Vivian: And like I said, this ain't no dusty marketing plan from your Pappy's 1920s. You guys... I don't know what I'm on.
Chelsea: I will say, this is actually a useful marketing plan. This is something that before we started recording, I told Vivian, I'm so glad that you came up with this. This is something that people will actually use. As someone who is a professional marketer and has created professional marketing plans, no. We ain't doing that, because it's not necessary.
Vivian: Well, so let's talk about what if we just said the word marketing plan, usually what you may be thinking is what?
Chelsea: 30 page, year-long marketing plan with your SWOT analysis and your research and your data. I'm not saying all of that stuff is not important.
Vivian: I mean, that's what the bank is going to want to see if you're asking for a loan, okay?
Chelsea: Disclaimer, everyone. If you are looking for a marketing plan, marketing plan help to take to the bank, this is not that conversation.
Vivian: This is for functional use in your business, year to year. This is actually what I do whenever I'm thinking about a long-term marketing plan. It helps me to be able to break it up into digestible pieces. That's what I think this strategy or the way we approach it helps. That's what we're going to talk about, is we're going to walk through how you can actually create a marketing plan that is useful. That you can stick to in 2026.
Chelsea: Yes. Love that. Before we get started, Vivian, it's time for the *pew pew pew pew* That one wasn't that good.
Vivian: It was very long.
Chelsea: I know. Let me do it one more time. Ready, everyone? *pew pew pew pew* That one was better.
Okay, it's time for the marketing hot take. My marketing hot take is a marketing plan does not have to be a year long. It doesn't have to be 30 pages long. Please, Lord, no, no, no, no, no.
Vivian: I actually, shocking three in a row now.
Chelsea: Yes!
Vivian: I agree with you. I think there is very much this weird thing where, and y'all. Chelsea and I both went to school for marketing. We were marketing majors. What I tell people all the time is the stuff I learned in school was not the stuff I was actually doing in my day-to-day job as a marketing professional.
Chelsea: Oh no, let me tell you.
Vivian: It's still not. Are there core concepts that were extremely useful? Did I learn things? Absolutely. However, the marketing plan that we were taught to create was more so like we said earlier, so that you could take to the bank and perhaps some of these big corporations do it that way. Do I think the people that are boots on the ground handling the marketing refer to that plan in their month to month decision making? I don't know. I can't say I believe that to be true.
Chelsea: I can say I don't believe that to be true. Yeah, but I'm also the one who's going to say that.
Vivian: Yeah. So what we don't want you to do is just to create a marketing plan that's going to get dusty on a bookshelf because you're creating more work for yourself. So let's get started with why you need a marketing plan to begin with.
Chelsea: Yes. This is the important stuff, because we got to convince you guys to even bother with this.
Vivian: Well, before we go any further, tell us in the comments, wherever you're listening, drop it in the comments and tell us, in 2025, did you have a marketing plan? Be honest. We just, we want to know because our theory is that most small business owners don't have one. And that's okay because I think you guys don't know that there's this optional way to maybe create something that's functional and works.
Chelsea: So why do you need a marketing plan? Last week we talked about marketing budgets and one of the reasons why you need a marketing budget is because it's going to keep marketing in the forefront of your mind. Same thing with a marketing plan. It's going to make sure that you remember to promote your small business. Because you guys are busy. We get it. Sometimes you forget to promote your business because you're doing all the other stuff, you know?
Vivian: Yeah. The way I view a marketing plan, it's a working document. Meaning you should be updating it pretty frequently. It'll help you stay consistent. It keeps you on track. It also reminds you, it's kind of like this little prod that reminds you to track your ROI because obviously it's like, well, if that didn't work, then do you need to keep it? Do you need to continue doing that?
Chelsea: Exactly. I love that. Look at you. You already marked off the other things I was going to mention, which is consistency and tracking ROI.
*S.O.B. Community Ad*
Vivian: This episode of the S.O.B. Marketing podcast is brought to you by the S.O.B. Community. If you are a small business owner that is neglecting your marketing and you feel like you've wasted time and money on marketing help that didn't deliver. Or if you're just craving support from people who actually get what it's like to run and promote a small business, then our membership community is for you. Visit skool.com/sob to sign up today to get instant access and weekly support. That's S-K-O-O-L dot com slash sob.
*End of S.O.B. Community Ad*
Chelsea: So let's go ahead and get into this new marketing plan. Vivian created it. This is something that she uses in her day-to-day life. So if you don't like it, take it up with her.
Vivian: Send me beef. Send me all the beef.
Chelsea: Send a voice note about how you have beef with her marketing plan.
Vivian: All right. So the way I like to think of this, you guys know I'm a visual person. What I would like to think of is going into 2026, I look at basically the calendar. So in my brain, I'm thinking I have a calendar, I visualize it. What I'm doing is I'm going to pre-fill this calendar with things I know I'm going to do. Then I'm going to leave space for things that I can have fun with, experiment with, and kind of interject in there. The reason having this visualization works is because essentially what you're doing is you're breaking down your marketing initiatives into two things.
So for a working document, if you guys want to download this marketing plan, we have a download.
Chelsea: Look at that. Made it easy for everyone.
Vivian: There you go. Click on it, save it on your desktop. You can print one out at the beginning of every month. You can print one out maybe once a quarter and then that way you'll have it throughout the year to utilize and to come back and do this for, I think once a quarter would be good. So you're breaking it down into manageable bites, but yet it's not too cumbersome because you're not doing it month to month.
Chelsea: Yes, I love that. I also, I love quarterly. I think that is easier to do. I'm a big hater on yearly marketing.
Vivian: Chelsea says no, no, no, no, no.
Chelsea: Because there's too, too much happens in a year. As small business owners, you need to be flexible and a marketing plan that's not flexible, a yearly marketing plan is not flexible. That's not going to work for you guys.
Vivian: Yeah, it just feels very overwhelming, I think. To think of 12 months at a time. We want you to go download this PDF. Keep it on your desktop. Print it out once a quarter. What does the PDF look like?
Chelsea: Okay, so you got at the top a section to put all of your marketing initiatives, all the ones that you're considering doing.
Vivian: This is your brain dump you guys, okay? Because what we want you to do is literally, you're going into 2026 and you're thinking if I had all the money in the world, what do I want to do? Okay, do I want to try postcards? Do I want to do radio advertising? Do I want to do podcast advertising on Spotify? Do I want to work events? Write this all down. So in that box, you're just going to brain dump and write down everything, all the marketing initiatives going into 2026.
Chelsea: Yes. Then what we want you to do is ask yourself two questions when it comes to each of these marketing initiatives. Will it reach my target audience and is it within my price range? That's a big one.
Vivian: Yes, and what this would require is maybe a little bit of research. If I have put down that I want to do some Spotify advertising and I research it, whether I'm using ChatGPT or whether I'm actually going onto the Spotify advertising website and or I'm reaching out to one of the reps and saying, "hey, do you have any plans that are within $500 a month?" because that's what you're willing to spend on it. If they say no, our lowest plan is like $1 a month, mark it off the list. Okay? If it's not in your price range, you want to mark it off the list. Maybe you could do it the following year. Maybe you can do it closer to the end of the year. But remember, you are planning this out for the first quarter. For every quarter going in. So the opportunities you have in the last quarter may be very different than what you can afford at the beginning, at the first quarter. This is a prop to go listen to last week's episode about budgeting, okay? Chelsea just hit me by the way, you guys.
Chelsea: I'm sorry.
Vivian: She just socked me.
Chelsea: I just punched her in the face.
Vivian: That's right.
Chelsea: Don't skip over that first question though. Will it reach my target audience? That's a big one too because don't be wasting your money on marketing initiatives just because they'll be fun for you if you're not reaching the right audience.
Vivian: Yeah, and part of that, okay, so let me give you an example. If let's say you want to take a billboard out, you're like, I want to see my face on a billboard, but you have a product that is more so national. You do a lot more online sales. Maybe dumping money into a local billboard is not going to be worth the $6 that you're going to pay for it, right?
Chelsea: Because billboards are expensive.
Vivian: They can be.
Chelsea: That's true.
Vivian: There are cheaper options that were, you know, but what I'm saying is like, be sure that it's aligning, like Chelsea said, with your target audience in where you can get the most bang for your butt. Butt, buck. If you're better off spending that money that you would use on a local billboard that would only reach people driving down a certain geographic area into, let's say, an online ad that would reach more targeted people that would buy your product, then do that.
Chelsea: Real quick sidebar.
Vivian: I going say, you're laughing about something. What?
Chelsea: Real quick sidebar. Tim and I were driving to downtown Charleston. We saw a billboard that said, depressed? Try ketamine.
Vivian: I mean, they're getting the message out there.
Chelsea: What? Okay.
Vivian: Isn't ketamine kind of like a big deal, isn't it?
Chelsea: Isn't it like bad for you?
Vivian: Yeah, I know people that have gotten addicted to that stuff. It's not good.
Chelsea: I don't, I'm not in the drug scene Vivian. I don't know what's going on.
Vivian: I mean, I did leave my rave days back in my 20s, so I've grown out of it.
Chelsea: I was never in the rave scene.
Vivian: I'm joking.
Chelsea: Okay, let's move on. So you marked off all of the marketing initiatives that are not going to work for you. So now you have the marketing initiatives that will work. Now what we're going to do, so the rest of the page, well, not the rest of page, but is it the rest of the page?
Vivian: Yeah, the rest of the page.
Chelsea: Yes, the rest of the page is going to be split in two and you have variable and fixed. Or maybe it's the other way.
Vivian: Yeah, fixed is first. Fixed and variable. They're in two columns.
Chelsea: They're in two columns. Yeah. I'm sorry. Most people are listening and I'm being very visual right now. Let me start over. The rest of the page is split in two columns, fixed and variable. You're going to place your marketing initiatives in where they belong in those two columns.
Vivian: Yes. Anything you did not mark off. They're going to be marketing initiatives that for this first quarter that you're planning, you're going to dump in one of those two columns. So you have to identify whether it's a fixed marketing initiative or a variable marketing initiative. Now you probably have some idea about what this is going to look like, but Chelsea, describe a fixed marketing initiative.
Chelsea: A fixed marketing initiative is an initiative that you are going to be doing consistently. So every month. Let's say for this first quarter, you're going to be doing digital ads the entire quarter. That's going to be a fixed marketing initiative, because you're doing it consistently.
Vivian: Yes, another one that's good for a fixed is email marketing.
Chelsea: Social media marketing.
Vivian: Yes. So because you're planning for those next three months, you know consistently every single month you're going to be doing that social media. Every single month you're going to be sending out those emails. Every single month you're going to be doing the digital ads. Fixed. Variable then is opposite.
Chelsea: Those are the marketing campaigns and initiatives that you're going to interject during those three months. So maybe it's a postcard campaign. Maybe you have an event coming up. Maybe you're hosting an event. So you want to send out postcards to everyone who lives near where the event is being held.
Vivian: Right. What we love about this and the reason I kind of work in this fashion when I'm looking at a marketing plan for a quarter is it allows you the flexibility to be able to add some of those campaigns in there and for each one of them, as you list these campaigns out, what would be extremely helpful is a ballpark figure of how much you think you're going to pay for each one of the initiatives. For example, under my fixed, if I have digital ads. Let's say I'm doing Google ads, because I want to show up in the search engine. So Google ads, I can tell myself because I set that, I'm like, great, I'm going to spend $200 every single month. So I put $200 per month next to digital ads. Email marketing, because I pay for the platform once a month and I know it costs me $19 Flodesk, what I use, then I put $19 per month next to that. Then for what was the last one? Social media marketing. Okay. I'm not going to hire an editor. I'm also doing everything on my phone. I'm doing everything on my own. So zero dollars because I'm doing all that work. Now, if you are hiring somebody or if you're doing something like that, then you want to include that cost in there. But what it does is in the fixed column, I can then add those. Now I know how much I'm going to be paying per month at the very least, because those are going to be things I'm doing consistently.
For the variable ones, Chelsea mentioned postcards and an event. Let's say the event, I'm paying $100 for entry fee. Then on top of that, I also know though, I got to take extra product and stuff like that. So I'm going to try to kind of do a quick calculation and say, probably overall, I'm going to pay $500 total to do that event. That includes any setup stuff, whatever. Then on top of it, the postcards. Okay, postcards I know are going to be a little more expensive because I have to pay postage for it, plus the printing of the postcard, plus whatever the fee is that I'm working with the printer, right? That right there, I'm just going to ballpark it, I'm giving myself $750 to use on those postcards. I know those two variable costs. I then interject somewhere in those three months whenever I have the funds available to do that.
Chelsea: Yes, and that's why we had marketing budget before this episode.
Vivian: Exactly, because one of the things Chelsea had talked about in that particular episode is there are different approaches. If you're a business that maybe is a little more seasonal and so you don't make as much money during the summertime, then pairing it with something like this, this type of marketing plan, this approach is going to give you the flexibility that you need in order to account for not having as much funds during that time to spend on your marketing initiatives. I think the other reason I personally like this, this is a lot less daunting to me to look at. I'm not flipping through five pages worth of stuff and explanations, pricing, and all of this. What I am doing is I have one sheet in front of me that I have planned for the next three months. In there, I literally am like, the fixed stuff is the priority. That is the consistent stuff. The items that I want on there are going to be the heavy hitting items that I know are going to move the needle in my business, okay? Sending out those emails consistently allows me to build rapport with potential customers. They need those touch points so that I can stay top of mind. They also need to know me better so then they can buy my product. If they've already bought from me, then, I am encouraging them consistently to repurchase. do a repeat purchase. Those are going to be fixed.
Chelsea: What I love about this is you can very clearly see what your fixed marketing initiatives are, and if you have any, cause let me tell you right now, if you don't have any fixed marketing initiatives, that's a problem.
Vivian: It is, it is and that may be your problem. That may be your marketing problem is that, so I do love this Chelsea. Then also vice versa, if you have all these fixed, but you don't have any variable, maybe it begs the question, are you doing enough experimentation? I do love this approach for that reason. The other part of it is we don't need to overcomplicate things, you guys. Having one page to look at very quickly to reference, it's easy to keep this pinned on a bulletin board and literally while you're working throughout the day or if you're only at your desk once a week, you look up, you see it and you're like, oh, I made the commitment to do email marketing as a fixed marketing initiative. Am I doing what I need to do on a weekly basis to ensure that I send those emails out? All of that.
Y'all, it really is that simple. This is a functional marketing plan that you can use and we hope, go download it. Get started on it because you know 2026 is knocking on the door and if you have any questions send us a voice note. We want to be able to help you guys, guide you through it. If you have a question as to whether something belongs in your fixed or your variable.
Chelsea: Or you could join the SOB community and we could go through it together on a zoom call.
Vivian: That would be even better. If you don't know, we have a community you can join with other small business owners every week. We talk about anything you want to talk about. Staying consistent in your marketing. You could bring questions. We bring updates, all of that good stuff. So if you're looking for marketing support in this next year, $50 a month will get you into our community.
Chelsea: That's a steal.
Vivian: It is.
Chelsea: It really is. Okay, Vivian, I'm going to do the TLDL now. Too long didn't listen, if you skipped ahead I'm going to give you a brief synopsis but make sure you listen to this entire conversation because it'll make more sense. Today we talked about marketing plans. Specifically we gave you guys a marketing plan that is simple and easy to use for small business owners and really for anyone who wants to actually pick up their marketing plan and follow it. Disclaimer, this is not a marketing plan that you can take to the bank though. We explain why you need a marketing plan, why it's important for your small business, and then we go through all of the steps of creating this marketing plan. Listing out your marketing initiatives, labeling them fixed versus variable, laying out your timeline and finding where you're going to put those variable marketing initiatives in that timeline. We also discuss how you don't need a yearly plan. You could do a monthly marketing plan or a quarterly marketing plan, which is really what we suggest. But you're adults, you're small business owners, you can do what you want.
Vivian: And as if we don't remind you guys enough, leave us a review. Please go do that right now. Yeah, leave us a little comment in there. Tell us how you're enjoying this podcast. And as always...
Chelsea: Go be the best SOB you can be.