A marketing plan becomes useful when it tells a team what to do on an ordinary Tuesday. A list of channels rarely does that. For a Canadian service business with limited production time, the first quarter should establish a manageable route from a specific buyer problem to a qualified conversation.
The framework below is an editorial planning example, not a promise of results. Its value is in the sequence: understand the constraint, build a complete path, then decide what deserves more investment.
Days 1–15: locate the constraint
Start with recent enquiries, including the ones that went nowhere. Separate people outside your service area, unsuitable projects, price objections and enquiries the team never reached. These are different problems. Better targeting may reduce geographic mismatch; it will not repair slow follow-up.
Interview the person who handles sales and the person who delivers the service. Ask which projects are attractive, which create operational pressure and what buyers misunderstand before signing. Choose one priority service and one audience for the quarter. A Vaughan business may serve all of Ontario, but that does not mean every campaign needs the same geographic reach.
Days 16–30: make the offer understandable
Write a one-page brief covering the customer, their problem, the proposed service, available evidence and the next step. Replace vague promises such as “complete solutions” with the work someone can expect: an audit, a defined project, a consultation or an ongoing engagement.
Prepare one landing page and one clear contact route. Check the page on a phone, submit a test with permission and confirm where the enquiry is stored. Assign responsibility for responding. If nobody owns this stage, more traffic will expose the gap more quickly.
Days 31–60: run a complete campaign
Select a channel because it fits the buying situation. Search may suit an existing, explicit need; social creative may help introduce a problem the buyer has not yet named. This is a starting hypothesis, not a universal channel rule. Concentrate the available budget rather than creating five campaigns too small to evaluate.
Prepare several genuinely different messages around the same offer. Keep a simple log of what launched, when, for whom and why. Record production costs as well as media spend. A campaign that looks efficient in the advertising account can still be difficult to maintain.
Days 61–90: decide what changes
Review the entire path: relevant visits, enquiries, qualified conversations, proposals and completed business where the sales cycle permits. Explain missing data instead of filling the gaps with optimistic assumptions. Recent enquiries may not have had enough time to become customers.
Choose one of three decisions: continue the current approach, change a specific part of the journey, or stop a hypothesis that has not earned further investment. Document the reason and the next review date. Avoid changing the audience, offer and page simultaneously unless the current approach is clearly unusable.
The working document
- Commercial priority: the service and buyer problem being addressed.
- Constraint: the stage currently limiting progress.
- Deliverables: page, creative, tracking and follow-up process.
- Ownership: who approves, produces, checks and responds.
- Review: what evidence would justify the next decision.
Keep this document short enough to use every week. The detailed calendar can change; the reason for doing the work should remain visible. If the quarter ends with a clearer offer, a functioning customer journey and a defensible next decision, the plan has created something more useful than a collection of posts.
EBJ FIELD NOTES / 90-DAY PLAN
| 01 Diagnose | 02 Build | 03 Learn |
Choose one commercial constraint, assign a named owner to each deliverable and review the evidence before expanding the plan.
Put it to work
Choose one commercial constraint, assign a named owner to each deliverable and review the evidence before expanding the plan.
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