Back in the Mad Men days, marketing was just paid advertising.  Pay big bucks for some high price advertising firm to get you recognized and you will achieve success.

Today the landscape has dramatically changed and for the better if you are a small business.  You no longer have to pay big bucks for paid advertising to attract attention.  Please note this does not mean you will not spend some dollars or even more time as time is money.

Now you must craft a marketing plan that attracts attention in an entirely different way.  This plan includes the following areas:

1. Internet including your website
2. Networking including trade shows
3. Direct mail
4. Paid advertising from local media to sponsorships for local business to business (B2B) events
5. Promotional items including brochures, business cards, pens, logo wear, etc.
6. Professional development

With the Internet now the #1 marketing channel for small businesses, this requires a secondary social media plan for the following activities:

1. Blog
2. Facebook
3. LinkedIn
4. Twitter
5. You Tube
6. Micro blogs and/or other social media sites

All of these activities require alignment and linkage to each other from your unified strategies to your actual tactics.

The challenge is so many small businesses engage in marketing without having a written strategic plan in place.  By investing 20 to 40 hours depending upon the size of the small business,  the small business owner to sales professional can efficiently and effectively direct their current and future actions for the greatest return on investment. Without a well thought out and documented strategic plan, business people embrace the role of Captain Wing-It by spraying their actions all over the place and then praying something will stick.

So how do you know if you are one of the many Captain Wing Its?  If you can specifically answer these questions quickly by writing them down, you probably are not a Captain Wing It:

• Who is your ideal customer?
• Where do you find your ideal customers?
• What are the demographics and psychographics of your ideal customer?
• What are the market trends in your industry?
• What are the economic trends in your industry?
• What makes you different than your competition? (What do you do better than your competitors?)
• What is your market share?
• What is your average sale?
• What is the long term value of your customer?
• What is your sales to earn ratio? (How many sales leads do you receive versus actually earned sales?)
• What is your gross profit margin?
• What is your average sales lead to conversion time frame? (How much time has elapsed from that first handshake to earning the sale?)
• What current marketing activities including paid advertising are delivering you the best sales leads and conversions?
• What are your sales right now compared to last year? Are you ahead, behind or the same?

There are many more strategic thinking questions to be answered in the other areas of your small business operations. These are mostly related to marketing and demonstrate how marketing goes way beyond paid advertising.

If you answered all of them relatively quickly and thoroughly, congratulations and you are not a Captain Wing It.

If you hesitated and could not quickly answer these questions, then I would encourage you to invest the time to answer these questions and even work with a small business coach or consultant to start constructing a written strategic plan that is goal driven.

At this time you are not ready to hire any marketing firm because the marketing firm will not look at other aspects of your business operations and hence misalignment will happen. This misalignment (think paid advertising) will be profit draining on your end and profit filling for the marketing firm.

Check out Triage Business Planning as a self study small business strategic plan designed for time constrained small business owners and sales professionals.

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Leanne Hoagland-Smith supports forward thinking leaders in bridging the gaps between today’s results and tomorrow’s goals in the key areas of strategic growth, people development and process improvement. She speaks and writes specifically to high performance sales people who require a tailored executive coaching solution and to small businesses under 50 employees whose challenges are more unique and resources more limited. Leanne can be reached at 219.508.2859 central time USA.  Follow her on Twitter or check out her profile on LinkedIn.