Most small business owners do not have marketing plans. This means that their marketing tends to be inconsistent, ineffective and inefficient.

Some service professionals do have marketing plans for their business, but fail to actually put it into practice. This really isn't much better than having no plan!

The secret to consistently marketing your services and products is to have what I call a "Marketing Action Plan". A plan saves you time and money, brings in more prospects and clients, helps you keep customers, and helps you run a successful and profitable business.

As soon as someone mentions anything with the word "plan" in it, business owners usually cringe and most run for the hills! Marketing action plans do not have to be laborious and minutely detailed. In fact, if it's too complicated, none of us will follow it.

Creating a marketing action plan and putting it into practice daily does require some thinking, time and commitment. However, it doesn't have to be the overwhelming task that many business owners fear.

I strongly believe that the way to tackle anything that appears to be too big and unwieldy is to break it down into smaller steps or chunks. The same applies to a marketing action plan - break it down into individual mini marketing action plans.

Marketing encompasses several different areas and corresponding activities - each of which can have a mini marketing plan built around it. Examples of areas are: publicity, public speaking, publishing articles, referral, joint venture, direct mail, promotional, advertising, internet (website, ezine, blog), automated email communication, networking, social media, and so on.

Each of these marketing areas can be looked at as a mini plan - with action-oriented steps and activities for you to follow.

Here's a simple and quick process to create your marketing action plan, by completing several mini plans:

1. take a blank piece of paper and draw a line down the center

2. write "Marketing Areas" on the left hand side

3. write "Action Steps" on the right hand side

4. list the marketing areas you want to focus on down the left column - leaving a few lines between each one

5. in the right column write your overall goal for each category

6. list each action step needed to achieve your marketing goals

7. put dates against each action step

8. transfer these dates into your Outlook, PDA or wall calendar

9. put the completed marketing action plan somewhere visible and DO IT!

To give you a better idea, below is an example of a couple mini marketing action plans:

Marketing Category: Publicity

Goal: send out a monthly press release

Action Steps:

* identify online press release services

* identify online and offline publications/newspapers that appeal to my target group

* find out the necessary contact information of publications

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