A 90-day marketing plan for UK small businesses (2026 edition)

A good small business marketing plan fits on two pages, runs in 90-day blocks and ties everything you do to one number you can measure. Spend the first month fixing the basics, the second getting seen in the places your customers already look, and the third putting more time and money into whatever brought in enquiries. Then do it all again.

If your marketing currently looks like a bit of posting, a bit of boosting and a lot of hoping, you’re in very good company. Most business owners we meet are brilliant at what they do and simply haven’t had the time to sit down and plan. This is the plan we’d write with you over a cup of tea.

Why a 90-day plan works for small businesses

Yearly plans tend to be too vague to act on and too rigid to change. A 90-day plan gives you:

• One clear goal you can keep in your head, such as “15 good enquiries a month for kitchen refits in Brighton and Hove”.
• Enough time for results to show. Most channels need six to ten weeks before the numbers mean much.
• A built-in check-in, so your money moves to what’s working instead of what you planned back in January.

The UK has 5.7 million private sector businesses, up 3.5% in a year, according to the Department for Business and Trade’s 2025 figures. Small and medium-sized businesses employ around 16.9 million people. Most of them are fighting for attention in the same search results and social feeds, so a focused plan beats a busy one every time.

Before you start: one goal and one number

Pick a single goal for the next three months and the number that proves you’ve hit it. For example:

• Good enquiries a month from the website and phone.
• Booked consultations.
• Online sales.
• Average order value, or how many customers come back.

Write down today’s figure. Don’t know it? That’s fine, and finding out is your very first job.

Days 1 to 30: the basics

Know what makes you different

Write one sentence that says who you help, what with, and why they should choose you. Try it on three customers. If they wouldn’t repeat it to a friend, keep tweaking.

Make it easy to say yes

A clear first step, like a free check, a fixed-price starter package or a short call, gets far more takers than “get in touch for a quote”.

Set up your measuring

• Google Analytics 4, with key events for calls, form enquiries and sales.
• Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, both verified, with your sitemap submitted.
• Call tracking, if most of your customers phone you.
• A simple monthly spreadsheet with your goal number, what you spent and where enquiries came from.

Get your website pulling its weight

Check that every service has its own page that answers the obvious questions: what it is, who it’s for, how much it costs (or how pricing works), how long it takes and what to do next. And make sure the site is quick on a phone, because that’s where most people will meet you first.

Claim and fill in your Google Business Profile

Add every service, your opening hours, real photos, a description written for customers and a link to the right page. Then start asking every happy customer for a review. Our Google Business Profile guide covers every setting.

Days 31 to 60: get seen

Publish answer-first content

Write one good page or article a week that answers a question customers ask before they buy. Put the answer in the first two sentences, then explain. This is the content most likely to appear in Google’s AI Overviews and in ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot answers. Our guide to answer engine optimisation explains how.

Show up locally

Make sure your name, address and phone number match everywhere: your website, Google Business Profile, social profiles and the main directories. Only add a page for each town you serve if you’ve got something genuinely local to say about it.

Start an email list

Email is still one of the most reliable channels you actually own (here’s our email marketing guide). UK marketers have reported a return of over £42 for every £1 spent on it (DMA, 2019). Offer something useful, like a checklist or a short guide, and send one helpful email a month.

Pick one or two social channels

Go where your customers already are: LinkedIn for business services, Instagram or Facebook for lots of local consumer businesses. Post regularly in one or two places rather than now and then everywhere.

Run one paid test

Choose a single campaign, such as Google Ads for your best service in your main town. Set a fixed budget and a target cost per enquiry before you start, and switch it off if it misses after four to six weeks.

Days 61 to 90: do more of what works

• Look at the numbers. Which sources brought enquiries, and what did each one cost?
• Stop the bottom third of activities.
• Double the time or budget on the best one.
• Turn results into proof: two or three short success stories with real numbers, naming the clients who are happy to be named.
• Ask for reviews after every job that goes well.
• Talk to partners: suppliers, businesses that share your customers and local organisations who could recommend you.

How much should you spend?

There isn’t one right answer, but here’s a sensible way to work it out:

1. Fix the basics first. Tracking, your website and your Google Business Profile cost more time than money.
2. Work back from your numbers. If a new customer is worth £2,000 in profit and one in five enquiries becomes a customer, you can spend up to £400 per enquiry and still break even on the first sale.
3. Keep tests separate. Set aside a small, fixed test budget each quarter so you can try something new without putting the channels that work at risk.

There’s more on this, with the benchmarks and a full worked example, in our guide to how much a small business should spend on marketing.

Using AI sensibly in your marketing

AI is now part of everyday life in marketing teams. HubSpot reports that 86.4% of marketing teams use AI in at least some of their work. Use it to speed up research, first drafts, ad variations and reports. Please don’t use it to replace what makes you different: your experience, your opinions, your customers’ stories and your own numbers. Answer engines and customers both reward the real, first-hand stuff.

Example: a 90-day plan for a Brighton kitchen fitter

Here’s how the plan looks in real life for a two-person kitchen fitting business covering Brighton, Hove and Lewes, aiming for 12 good enquiries a month.

Month one. Rewrite the homepage around one clear promise: a fitted kitchen in eight weeks, with one person to talk to throughout. Create separate pages for kitchen fitting, worktop replacement and kitchen design, each with typical prices and timescales. Set up GA4 key events for calls and quote requests, and fill the Google Business Profile with 30 recent project photos.

Month two. Publish four answer-first articles: “How much does a new kitchen cost in Brighton?”, “How long does a kitchen fit take?”, “Can you replace worktops without replacing units?” and “Do I need building regulations approval for a kitchen?”. Ask the last 20 customers for reviews. Start a £400-a-month Google Ads test on “kitchen fitters Brighton” with a target of £40 per enquiry.

Month three. The ads brought enquiries in at £36 each, so the budget goes up to £600. The worktop page brought the most enquiries from Google, so it gets a short video and a success story. Instagram brought no enquiries in eight weeks, so it drops to one post a week and that time goes into email instead, with a quarterly newsletter to past customers asking for recommendations.

Your channels will be different. The pattern stays the same: decide, measure, then move your time and money to what worked.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Trying every channel at once. Two channels done well beat six done badly.
• Changing direction every fortnight. Most things need six to ten weeks before you can judge them.
• Counting likes instead of enquiries. Likes are lovely, but only if they lead to customers.
• Forgetting the customers you already have. Reviews, recommendations and repeat work are usually your cheapest growth.
• Not writing anything down. A plan you can’t see is a plan you won’t follow.

The numbers to track

What to track	Why it matters	Where to find it
Good enquiries	Your main goal	Your CRM, call tracking, GA4 key events
Cost per enquiry	Shows which channels pay their way	Ad platforms and your spreadsheet
Conversion rate by page	Shows which pages persuade people	GA4
Search impressions	An early sign you’re being seen more	Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools
AI visits	Visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot	A custom channel group in GA4
Reviews	Trust, for people and for machines	Google Business Profile

Your questions, answered

Ready for some help?

Not sure where to start? Our free marketing guides walk you through every part of the plan as an online checklist, and our marketing ideas tool suggests ideas for your industry, time and budget in about a minute. Or if you’d like a second pair of eyes on your plan, book a free 30-minute marketing review. We’d love to help.