Marketing plan for a small business in 2027: budget and deadlines

A marketing plan for a small business doesn’t have to be a 40-page document. One sheet of paper is enough, answering three questions: where your customers came from in 2026, how much you spend on it, and what you will do in which month of 2027. Without it, money for ads and SEO gets spread thinly over everything, and after a year it is hard to say what worked.

This guide walks you through preparing such a sheet. I am writing it as of 31 October 2026, so at the end you will also find dates from 2027 that may affect your budget. All the numbers in the examples are illustrations, not market statistics.

Step 1: check what brought customers in 2026

The plan starts with data, not ideas. Collect four things from 2026:

1. The number of contacts month by month: phone calls, forms, messages, email inquiries.
2. The source of each contact: Google (local results, maps, ads), referrals, Facebook, a returning customer, other.
3. The number of jobs that actually came out of those contacts.
4. The cost: how much went on ads, maintaining the Business Profile, SEO, materials and people’s time.

You will see phone calls and forms from the website in GA4 if you track clicks on the phone number and form submissions. Calls from ads and campaigns are shown more accurately by call tracking. The question “Where did you hear about us?” asked in every conversation and written down in a notebook also works, and it costs nothing.

If nothing was tracked in 2026, that’s fine. Write it down as your first goal for January: set up tracking. If you would rather hand it off, I set up phone and form tracking in GA4 in the Analytics and tags service (from PLN 990 net). I describe the market and competitors separately in the market and competitor analysis.

Step 2: calculate the cost of one contact and one job

Divide the spending on a channel by the number of contacts from that channel. The result is the cost of one contact. Then divide by the number of jobs and you get the cost of a job. Compare it with how much you keep from a typical job.

An illustrative example: if a channel cost PLN 6,000 and brought 30 contacts, one contact costs PLN 200. If 6 jobs came out of those 30 contacts, one job costs PLN 1,000. That is a good result or a bad one, depending on how much you earn on a job.

Look at the data honestly. Channels you can’t measure (referrals, a sign on a car) are not worse, just harder to compare. Don’t cut them from the plan just because they have no numbers.

Step 3: set the budget

Start with the amount you can spend every month without endangering your cash flow, not with wishes. Only then split it across channels. For a local business I suggest four buckets:

This is an example, not a norm. A business with a full calendar that only needs better jobs should put more into SEO and reviews. A business that is just starting out often starts with ads, because they bring the first calls within days.

Remember that the “Ads” bucket in the table is clicks only, while managing the channels costs extra or has to fit within the other buckets. My net “from” prices for orientation: Google Ads is from PLN 990 one-time and from PLN 790 a month or 15% of the budget, not counting click costs. SEO and search rankings is from PLN 790 a month, and an audit from PLN 990. A Google Business Profile is from PLN 490, and ongoing management from PLN 349 a month. Add 23% VAT to the prices. The final amount depends on the scope, and I prepare a quote within 24 hours.

Step 4: pick three priorities, not ten

A small business can’t do everything at once. Choose three priorities for the whole year and write them as sentences you can check. For example:

• “By the end of March I track phone calls and forms, and every contact has its source recorded.”
• “By the end of June I have 40 Google reviews, because competitors have 35 on average.”
• “From April I run a Google Ads campaign for the two services with the highest margin.”

You can check your competitors’ review counts in my competitor audit in Google Maps. You enter a service and a city, and after about a minute you see the ranking, the ratings, the number of reviews against the median and how complete the business profiles are. This turns the goal of “more reviews” into a concrete number.

How do you choose priorities? Ask three questions about each idea:

1. Do I have data that it works (or that competitors do it)?
2. Can I do it within 3 months?
3. Will I be able to measure the effect?

If the answer to any of them is “no”, the idea goes to the reserve, not to the priorities.

Step 5: the seasonal calendar

Every industry has its season. Ads and content should start earlier than when customers begin searching, because the Business Profile, the website and reviews need time. Write down in your calendar:

• when the season starts in your industry (e.g. tires, terraces and gardens, spring renovations, heating),
• when you do the preparation: photos of completed projects, updating the price list, the Business Profile, the service page,
• when the campaign starts and when you review it,
• when the season ends, so you don’t burn the budget on empty months.

If you sell online, also enter the promotion dates. Black Friday in 2027 falls on 26 November (in 2026: 27 November), and I describe the preparations in the guide on Black Friday in a small store. For service businesses, holidays, vacations and the start of the school year are often more important, but that depends on the industry, so here the best data is your own from 2026.

2027 dates that may affect your budget

This is not legal or tax advice. As of 31 October 2026. Deadlines in regulations and in vendors’ programs can change, so check them in official sources or with your accountant before you decide.

• 1 January 2027: KSeF (Krajowy System e-Faktur, Poland’s national e-invoicing system) for the smallest businesses. From this date the obligation to issue invoices in KSeF also covers businesses that in 2026 could invoice outside the system because the value of their invoices did not exceed PLN 10,000 gross per month. The Ministry of Finance announced a postponement of penalties for KSeF errors until the end of 2027 (this requires a change in the law), but the obligation itself is not moving. Check the details and exceptions with your accountant. If you sell in an online store, see the guide on KSeF in an online store.
• 3 April 2027: NIS2 and the amended KSC Act (ustawa o krajowym systemie cyberbezpieczeństwa, Poland’s national cybersecurity system act). The amendment of the KSC Act entered into force on 3 April 2026. Key and important entities that already met its criteria at that time have 12 months to implement the obligations, including risk management and incident handling. I describe whether this applies to your business in the guide on NIS2 and the KSC Act. If it doesn’t, your customers covered by the Act may require security measures from their suppliers.
• 12 October 2027: end of the 2nd year of paid Windows 10 updates. Windows 10 support ended on 14 October 2025. Businesses can buy the paid Extended Security Updates (ESU) program for up to three years: the first year ended on 13 October 2026, the second ends on 12 October 2027, and the third on 10 October 2028. According to Microsoft, the price per computer doubles every year. If you have computers in your business, plan to replace them or upgrade the system.
• 31 December 2027: end of security support for PHP 8.3. If your website runs on PHP (e.g. WordPress), plan the move to a newer version, e.g. PHP 8.4 (supported until 31 December 2028). Version 8.2 loses support as early as 31 December 2026, which I cover in the guide on the end of PHP 8.2 support.

These deadlines are not marketing, but they take time and money. Put them in your calendar and reserve a “technical” fund in the budget, so you don’t take it from ads in the middle of the season.

A one-page plan: a template to copy

Copy the skeleton below into a document and fill it in with your own numbers:

MARKETING PLAN 2027 – [company name]

1. WHAT BROUGHT CUSTOMERS IN 2026
   Channel | Contacts | Jobs | Cost | Cost per job
   Google (maps, results) |  |  |  |
   Google Ads |  |  |  |
   Referrals |  |  |  |
   Other |  |  |  |

2. MONTHLY BUDGET (net): PLN ______
   Ads: ___  SEO and content: ___  Google Business Profile and reviews: ___  Reserve: ___

3. THREE PRIORITIES
   1) ______________________ by ______
   2) ______________________ by ______
   3) ______________________ by ______

4. CALENDAR
   Season from ____ to ____. Preparation: ____. Campaign start: ____.
   Results review: every quarter (January, April, July, October).

5. TECHNICAL AND LEGAL DEADLINES
   KSeF, NIS2, Windows, PHP: checked on ______

Once a quarter you sit down for half an hour with this sheet, enter the new numbers and change two things at most. If you change more at once, you won’t know what worked.

Summary

A good marketing plan for a small business is one page: data from 2026, a budget in four buckets, three priorities and a seasonal calendar with technical deadlines. The most important thing is measuring, because without it every year starts from zero.

If you want me to help you collect the data and put together the plan, write to me. The first conversation and quote are free, and I reply within 24 hours. To start, you can also check your competition with the free competitor audit.