I created a visual marketing plan model that helps small businesses create a marketing plan. Most of my work with my clients uses the model to simplify the process and help the business owner understand the components and how they interrelate. The model contained 7 categories – Advertising, Events, Public Relations, Direct Marketing, Internet Marketing, Word of Mouth and Strategic Alliances.

I use this concept as the basis for a presentation on developing an integrated marketing plan that I offer to small business owners (a topic that easily can run from 30 minutes to 3 hours).

As I was updating my slides for the marketing workshop that I gave today, I wanted to include social media (new media) marketing as part of the marketing mix. My perception prior to thinking this through for the workshop was to include social media marketing under Internet marketing along with search engine marketing, PPC advertising, SEO and other Internet related activities.

However, as I organized my thoughts, I started categorizing the marketing mix into the following areas based on their primary marketing objective:

• Generating leads
• Increasing visibility
• Developing credibility
• Building relationships

By looking at the tactics through this lens, my “ah ha” moment was when I realized that Internet marketing fell into the “generating leads” category because it was a direct marketing activity that drove your prospect to do something (visit the site, sign up for the free offer, etc.) while social media marketing fell into the “developing credibility” and “building relationships” categories.

For completeness, here are all the activities by category:

• Generating leads – direct marketing, Internet marketing, events (tradeshows)
• Increasing visibility – events, public relations, advertising
• Developing credibility – events, public relations, new media marketing
• Building relationships – word of mouth, strategic alliances, new media marketing

The beauty of this classification is that it helps business owners understand what tactics they may wish to use depending on their marketing goals. If this helps you, let me know. If you have a different classification for all the marketing tactics out there, let me know that too.