I like Toni Grundstrom’s post where she outlines five reasons to get started creating your marketing plan. Here is a quick review of her reasons:

1. It compels you to think about your business
2. It creates organization
3. It helps you decide how and where to spend your marketing dollars.
4. You can plan when and where to begin your marketing tactics
5. You will know what you want to achieve

The reason I like Toni’s list is that she focuses on creating a marketing plan to help you run your business by helping you make day-to-day decisions. Too many people, in my opinion, create marketing plans because someone told them “they had to” – either for funding or because “that’s just what you do”.

The real benefit of having a marketing plan comes from the planning and reviewing and then adjusting the plan.

This is why I am such a fan of the Marketing Plan Pro software. Not only does it help you create your plan quickly, but it is also the perfect tool for evaluating your actual results against the plan so you can see what is really working and eliminate those pieces of your plan that are wasting money.

If you don’t have a marketing plan, I encourage you to start working on one today. If you do have a plan, remember, the plan is never right, so review and adjust it often.