A Marketing Plan is a key tool that smart business owners use to grow their businesses. Since writing your own plan can be a little overwhelming, we’ve decided to break it down for you in a series of monthly articles. Each installment will feature step-by-step instructions on one activity, including tips, resources and suggestions for using the activity to expand your business.

You can commit as many hours as you like to these monthly exercises, but plan to give each one at least two hours of undivided attention. Don’t be surprised if you’re bursting with ideas and have to rein yourself in to narrow down your list of choices to pursue. And don’t forget to keep notes so you can revisit the rejected ideas later.

Exercise 1 -  Review Existing Advertising Take a good, hard look at what you’ve been doing and how it’s working (be honest!). Pick one area to focus on in the next few months.

Exercise 2 -  Focus on Target Market This month you’ll analyze who you’re selling to, and how effectively you’re doing it. You’ll also set a strategy for increasing your share of this market.

Exercise 3 – Determine Optimal Product Mix Using your sales report, you’ll identify which products are most popular and which are yielding the best profit. You’ll tailor your advertising to increase sales of those products.

Exercise 4– Grow Email Marketing List Grow Email Marketing List Who makes up your email marketing list right now? Employ strategies to increase that list and expand your reach.

Exercise 5 – Focus on Social Networking Strategies Already using social networking as a marketing strategy? Evaluate what’s working and where you need to expand, or choose one or two methods to start testing now.

Exercise 6 – Six-month Review of Advertising Strategy Revisit the plan you set in January, keeping the best and losing the rest. Choose a new idea to try in the 3rd and 4th quarters. (And yes, we’ll do this again in January 2010.)

Exercise 7 – Evaluate Pricing Strategy Selling low isn’t always the best strategy. Sometimes it’s possible to increase your prices and commissions, while keeping your sales steady. Find your optimal price point.

Exercise 8 – Generating Traffic with Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Examine the content of your custom Web page or any external sites you use to drive traffic to your store. Don’t have a custom site? Now’s the time to create one.

Exercise 9 – Analyze Results of Email Strategy Email marketing is one of the easiest, most effective, and most cost-efficient tools in your arsenal. Time to look at your current strategy and set up a six-month plan.

Exercise 10 – Revisit Optimal Product Mix  Time to review your product mix to make sure the activities of the past six months haven’t changed your customer base or product mix. Check for new commission leaders.

Exercise 11 – Year-to-date Cost/Benefit Analysis Determine your Return on Investment (ROI) for every cash outlay, deciding which to keep and which to drop. This will pay off in December, when you plan your 2010 budget.

Exercise 12 – New Year, New Plan Go back and look at what you’ve done throughout 2009. Take what helped you and make your own custom Marketing Plan for 2010, including deadlines, goals and costs.