You will be able to finish your one-page marketing plan and explain it in five minutes to someone who will hold you to it.
Before you start, gather what you have built so far: the one-page plan draft from lesson 7.1, the review dates from lesson 7.2, the continue, change and stop thresholds from lesson 7.3, your budget sheet and lifetime value sum from module 6, and the marketing audit from lesson 1.4. The project takes about an hour, plus the time to meet the person you present to.
A plan that only you have read has never been tested. You wrote it, so you can already explain away every gap in it. When you walk someone else through the same page, the weak parts become obvious, usually within the first five minutes. Often you notice them yourself before the listener has said a word. So the work has three parts: finish the plan, check that its parts agree with each other, and then present it to one honest person.
Go through the nine sections and fill every blank. If a section is still hard to fill, it usually means you skipped a decision in an earlier module. Go back to that lesson and make the decision now. Writing something vague in the box to get past it leaves the gap in place and makes it harder to see later.
Next, lay the plan beside your marketing audit from lesson 1.4. The audit listed everything you did before the course, with the hours and cost of each. Every activity in the audit that does not appear in your plan goes on your stopping list. Write it at the bottom of the page or on the back. This list is often where most of your freed time comes from, and writing it down makes it real. Without it, the old activities tend to carry on alongside the new plan.
Priya runs a tuition centre. Her target customer is parents in Tampines with a child in P4 to P6 whose maths marks have started to slip. Her two channels are her Google Business Profile, for new families, and a monthly WhatsApp update, for current families. Her goal is 20 new students by the start of next term, from about 27 enquiries a month. Her budget is about S$630 a month including her time, against a maximum acquisition cost of S$300 (all of Priya's figures are example figures). Her review dates are in her calendar, and she has continue, change and stop thresholds for both channels. Her stopping list from the audit has three items: Instagram as a growth channel, flyers at the MRT, and a listing site she paid for and never checked.
A plan can have every section filled and still not hold together. Check these four links before you show it to anyone.
Goal fits channels. Can your channels produce the enquiries your goal needs? If the goal needs 27 enquiries a month and your channels have never produced more than 10 between them, either the goal is too high or you need a written reason why this quarter will be different. Budget fits goal. Work out your total monthly cost, which is money plus hours. Divide it by the number of new customers the goal promises, and compare the result with your maximum acquisition cost from lesson 6.3. If your cost per new customer is higher, the plan loses money on every customer it wins. Channels fit customer. Both channels should be places your target customer actually is, at the journey stages where your customer journey map showed gaps. Offer fits value proposition. What you ask people to do should follow from the reason they would choose you.
If any link fails, fix it now, before you present.
Choose one person who will tell you the truth rather than only encourage you, and who knows your business or your work. A business partner, your manager, a peer from a business course or a friend who runs their own shop are all suitable. Send them the page beforehand and set a time this week.
Keep the presentation to five minutes. Cover who the plan is for, why they would pick you, which two channels you chose and why, the goal and the budget, and how you will know it is working.
Then ask one question: which part do you doubt most? You want the single biggest doubt because that is the one you can act on. Listen without defending the plan, and write the doubt down in their own words. If they raise several, ask which one worries them most.
Priya presented her plan to her business partner. His main doubt was whether 27 enquiries a month was realistic when last term had averaged 20.
Revise the plan once, in response to that one doubt. A revision can take three forms. You can change a number. You can add evidence that answers the doubt. Or, if the doubt is fair but you decide not to change the section, you can keep it as it is and note why. Revise only once; further rounds of editing at this stage tend to undo decisions you have already tested.
Priya changed a number. She revised her goal down to 15 new students, which matches her one-in-four rate on last term's enquiries, and she noted her partner's doubt on the plan.
Then date the page, label it version 1, and note the reviewer's main doubt at the bottom. Priya's version 1 is dated and printed above her desk. At your first monthly review, come back to the reviewer's doubt and check it against your numbers to see whether they were right.
When you present yours, choose a time this week and send the person the page beforehand, so the five minutes are spent on their doubt rather than on reading.
Finish your one-page plan, take five minutes to present it to one person, and save it as a dated version 1 with their main doubt written on it.
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