If you have been in business for over a year and tracked your marketing related expenses you can easily calculate your “cost to acquire one customer” or “cost to sell one product” by dividing your annual sales and marketing costs by the number of units (or customers acquired) sold.

Your next step is to take your cost to sell one unit or acquire one customer and simply multiply it by your unit sales or customer acquisition goal. By doing this simple computation you will get a rough estimate of what you need to invest to meet your sales goals for the next year.

If you are serious about growing your business you need to invest in it. It’s imperative you create a marketing budget.

There you have it, my 7-step marketing plan. It’s simple really. You’ll need to learn more about your marketing medium(s) of choice, their appropriateness for your target market and your message. Just get your plan down on paper. You don’t have to kill a tree to create your marketing plan.

It could be the most important document you and your team members will ever create.