Most small businesses will write their 2027 marketing plan the same way they wrote the last one. Sometime in mid-January, once the holiday mess is cleaned up and the slow weeks hit, somebody says “we should really do more marketing this year.” Then February gets busy and nothing changes until the next January.
Late October is a better time to build it, for boring practical reasons. You still have two months to test something before the year turns. You know roughly how 2026 went. And whoever takes your spring customers is probably sitting down to plan right now.
You don’t need a weekend retreat. Block two hours and work through five steps.
Find out where your customers came from
Look backward before you plan anything. Pull your 2026 customer list and put a source next to each name: referral, Google, Facebook, repeat customer, yard sign, chamber connection, the truck wrap.
Most owners can’t do this cleanly, and that is the first real finding. If you can’t say where the business came from, you’ve been budgeting on gut feel.
Do your best, then rank the sources by revenue instead of lead count. Twelve tire-kickers from one channel and three big jobs from another are not the same thing, and a lead count hides the difference. Starting now, ask every new caller how they heard about you and write it down, even in a spreadsheet. If you’d like the calls and website visits tracked for you, that’s what our analytics reporting does.
Set a number and work backward
“Grow the business” isn’t a plan. Pick a revenue target for 2027 and break it down into jobs.
Say you want to add $300,000 and your average job is $6,000. That’s 50 more jobs, about four a month. If you close one in three quotes, you need twelve more quotes a month. If one lead in four turns into a quote, you need roughly 48 more leads a month.
Now there’s something concrete to plan against, and it’s often sobering. Sometimes the honest answer is that the target needs another crew before it needs another marketing channel. Better to figure that out in October than in May.
Decide the budget before anyone calls you
Pick a percentage of revenue for marketing and write down the dollar figure. We laid out the ranges we use for businesses in maintenance mode, growth mode and year one in how much a Texoma small business should spend on marketing. The exact number matters less than deciding it in advance, so 2027 spending is a decision you already made instead of a monthly argument with yourself. It also gives you a real reason to say no to the January cold callers.
Then split it. Most of the money goes to whatever reliably brings in customers today. A slice goes to foundation work like your website and Google Business Profile. And a small amount, maybe a tenth, goes to testing one new thing. That last bucket is how you find the next channel before you need it.
Map your 2027 marketing plan to the Texoma calendar
Generic plans treat every month the same. Your year has a shape. For most local service businesses around here it runs something like this:
- November and December: retail and restaurants peak, and Small Business Saturday falls on November 28 this year. The trades slow down, which makes it the right window for website work and the content you never have time for in July.
- January and February: tax refunds start arriving, and they pay for a surprising amount of home improvement and elective spending. One hard freeze can bring a week of emergency calls. Plan for both.
- March through May: spring buying season, hail and storm damage, and lake season picking up around Texoma. For most trades these are the heaviest lead months.
- June through August: peak demand and peak competition. Ad prices usually climb. Organic visibility you built earlier in the year earns its keep here.
- September and October: school routines settle, Friday night football and fall festivals take over local attention, and it’s time to plan again.
Then add the local reality. Texas Instruments started production at its first new Sherman fab in December 2025, with room for up to four on the site. New households keep arriving without a plumber, a dentist, a lawn service or a mechanic. Every month you’re easy to find in local search is a month you get the first shot at people with no loyalty to anyone yet. We went deeper on that in our post on the TI boom.
Pick what you’re stopping
Everybody skips this step, and it’s the one that makes the plan real.
Look at what you paid for in 2026 that produced nothing you can point to. The billboard no customer has ever mentioned. The directory listing that auto-renews every March. The sponsorship you keep because canceling would feel rude. The social account you post to out of guilt while nobody responds.
Cut at least one. Your time and money are already spoken for, so a plan that only adds things is a wish list.
Keep it to one page
The finished plan should fit on a single sheet: the revenue target, the lead math behind it, the annual budget in dollars, the three or four channels you’re committed to, the one thing you’re testing, the one thing you’re cutting, and the two or three numbers you’ll check each month.
Anything longer won’t get opened again. If you want someone to pressure-test the numbers with you, we do this with owners every fall, and you can book a time here.
Last step: put a recurring 30-minute appointment on the first business day of each month to look at those numbers. Honestly, that habit is worth more than the plan.