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If You Read One Article About A 90 Day Marketing Plan Read This One

Posted By: Liz Cortes

January 9, 2020

Marketing Strategy

It’s a good thing you’re holding your phone right now because I am outlining our step-by-step process to designing a 90 day marketing plan.

If you read one article about a 90 day marketing plan read this one! I’m here to guide you on what we do with our clients so you can do it too.

This is the Marketing Lab Checklist I give out to everyone who attends locally or online.

Download the 2-page checklist HERE!

The problem is most local business owners and marketing managers throw up a basic website that is just an expensive business card.

Another problem is they spend more time on social media and advertising but this is a waste of time and money because they didn’t take the time to create a clear message so people buy.

After you complete this plan and you know that you did it right, then you can do social media, blogging, and advertising.

Don’t make this mistake and skip these 5 steps!

When it comes to a basic 90 day marketing plan, there are 5 things we think every business should create:

A BrandScript
A One-Liner
A Wire-Framed Website
A Lead-Generator
Automated Emails

Depending on your workload you could take 90-days to complete each of the 5 parts of the checklist or if you want to do it, Larry The Cable Guy style, “get er done”! When a client hires us, get it all done in 90-days.

Larry The Cable Guy Image From https://csnews.com

If you are new to our blog, Hi, I’m Liz Cortes, co-founder of RebelFish Local in San Diego. We know small businesses struggle to compete with corporate brands. We believe businesses with great reputations deserve to outsmart the big guys online so they can make a local impact and grow.

If you get stuck on any part of this 90-day marketing plan checklist, DM me on Instagram or Facebook.

WEEK 1 & 2 – Complete Your BrandSctipt & One-Liner

“Most companies waste an enormous amount of money on marketing”, says Donald Miller, In the book Building A StoryBrand.

I agree! Weekly, marketing directors, and business owners reach out saying, “I want to hire you to do advertising”. But when i go to their website, social media, and Google My Business page I see the problem.

“People buy products only after they read words that make them want to buy those products” is another powerful quote from that book.

StoryBrand has a messaging framework that will make your 90-day marketing plan make sense to your audience so they take action. When you take the time to have a clear message then all you online assets will work.

Here are 5 ways to complete your BrandScript and One-Liner:

Listen to this podcast
Read the Building A StoryBrand book
Go through StoryBrand Messaging Framework course in Business Made Simple University
Hire someone to do it for you.
Do three 90-minute coaching calls with us to review your work and make sure it is right.

You need to make sure this is right before moving onto the next part.

WEEK 3 & 4 – Wireframing your website

This is something new we’ve been implementing since 2019. When you take the time to write the copy and wire-frame your site, you will make sure that your web developer builds what you want.

In this Facebook Live, I go over our 12 step process to launching a website from a DIY approach.

WEEK 5 & 6 – Launch your new website

For local businesses, we ONLY recommend building your website on WordPress. You will have an easier time ranking locally and when your website is set up right for Local SEO.

When I launched my first website in 2009, I hired someone to build it. Then in 2010, I launched a blog and I built that myself. I’ve always used WordPress so when we opened our agency we of course only build on WordPress.

In this Facebook Live I do a Weekly Wednesday Website Homepage Audits – Real Estate Broker and Website & Branding Company plus examples of other StoryBrand websites for other industries.

WEEK 7 – Brainstorm lead-generator ideas

A lead-generator AKA free offer, freemium, freebie. Depending on who you follow they are all the same thing. Its something you give away in exchange for someone’s name and email. Hence a way for you to generate leads. Its something they can read or take a quick action in less than 5-minutes to make them feel good and accomplished while they are deciding if they want to do business with you.

The quickest and easiest type of lead-generator is a PDF checklist.

If you have Business Made Simple University, there is a module in the Marketing Made Simple course that will help you with this process.

If you’ve never made one, pick this type. Verse a 3 video series or an ebook. They take too long to make and you will most likely get stuck being a perfectionist or stalled with paralysis because they are huge projects.

After you do your morning routine and are feeling great, do a 10-minute brain dump. Think of your ideal customer. You know, that person you want to guide to success in the StoryBrand exercises you did in weeks 1 and 2.

What would help solve their external problems? What are they struggling right now and would be googling about? How to…?

Set a timer for 10 minutes and don’t stop writing.

Didn’t come up with 20-25 ideas?

Do this exercise tomorrow when you are fresh after your morning routine. Your brain will most likely come up with even better ideas.

Pick 1 that you’d have fun creating a checklist for and something your ideal customer would really benefit from.

WEEK 8 – Write the content

Keep it simple! If you are making a checklist as I suggested, keep it to 2 pages.

Show it to 3-5 people who are your ideal customers to see if its something they’d download.

You can also get feedback on the title you picked.

The title, the image graphic where they put their name and email, plus the downloadable all need to line up with solving your ideal customer’s current problem.

This is why copywriters get paid the big bucks. They know how to write to get people to take action.

There is so much that goes into this process but it’s better to have something up rather than nothing.

If you have 100s of people coming to your website on a monthly basis but you get just your leads the option to “book appointment” you are missing out on many people who are still researching and aren’t ready to commit yet.

If this is something you’d like me to dive deeper in, DM me and I’ll think about writing a blog or talking about it on my next Facebook Live.

WEEK 9-10 – Make it look professional

Hiring a graphic designer is worth the extra money. We have 2 that we work with and they know how to make lead-generating PDFs beautiful. They went to school for graphic design. Most likely you didn’t. So stop trying to do what comes naturally to these amazingly creative people.

If you insist on doing it yourself. Canva has some great templates.

I recommend 2 weeks for this because if you are working with a graphic designer there may be 2-3 revisions till they get it how you want it to look.

WEEK 11 – Write 5-10 emails

Having an automated email sequence will make your life easy. It is 6-10 emails depending on your industry and the problem you are solving with your lead-generating PDF. You know how many your ideal customer will want.

Here are some potential themes of your emails:

Thank you for requesting + delivery of the free asset
Problem + Solution
Testimonial
Overcome An Objection
Salesletter

I know I sound like a broken record but learn more about this in Business Made Simple University in the Marketing Made Simple course.

WEEK 12 – Setup your CRM & sync with your website

What’s a CRM? This is how you will send out your automated emails. You made already have an industry-specific CRM connected to your practice management system. So you’ll have to do your research to see if what you have will work for you.

We set up ActiveCampaign for our clients. It works great with WordPress plugins like Gravity Forms and Stripe.

Where do you put the lead-generating PDF on your website?

This is from the footer of our homepage.

If you’ve been attending our weekly Wednesday Website Audit Facebook Live, you already know what I preach!

Just above the footer on your Homepage
In relevant Service Page
In relevant Blog Posts

Don’t put it everywhere. Think about the user experience on your site. They googled and found your website but when they come to your website they find the information they don’t care about. Only put relevant information on the page.

For example, for this blog, it would be weird for me to get you a social media posting checklist because this isn’t the focus of this article.

Are you going to follow this 90-day marketing plan?

At RebelFish Local, we know small businesses struggle to compete with corporate brands. We believe businesses with great reputations deserve to outsmart the big guys online so they can make a local impact and grow.