Nine Elements of a Good Marketing Plan
Marketing Plans
It's Your Move.
When you ask most business owners, "Do you have a marketing plan?" they generally answer that they have one. Some think that a business plan or a working schedule is the equivalent of a marketing plan, or that the marketing plan is one part of the business plan.
Marketing Plan vs. a Business Plan
Business plans are meant to sell a company to investors or financial backers, or key management personnel. Business plans are used to raise investment and loan funds and are typically for outside use (accountants, investors, IRS, bankers, and board members). A business plan is typically broken down into five sections (the Company, Markets, Products/Services, Finance and Employees) regardless of the stage of your business (just starting, in the growth stage, or mature business). Marketing Plans are the blue prints to business success. They are the tools for internal planning and implementing a detailed method to making profitable sales and growing the business.
- Overview of your company's approach to marketing and its history
- Mission Statement
- Products and Services offered, and the unique selling benefit to the buyer
- List the standards in the industry, new marketing ideas, and any emotional component of the product or service
- Sales cycles and products/services needed; life cycles of product
- The personnel needed and job descriptions
Who are your customers now, and who will your customers be in the future? Which customer is the best prospect? Do you sell to other businesses or organizations instead of directly to the public? In the Market Strategy you must provide evidence that the end-user needs your solution. Consider the consumer demands and response to their emotional and logical needs.
- Segmentation: divide potential market into categories, items shared in common, or segments of an industry
- Targeting: by geographic area, income, demographics, or specific unique characteristics of the potential customer
- Positioning: key reasons a customer will buy your product/service
- Competitor's assessment: who, where, product lines, prices, employees, strengths, weakness, market share, market strategy and PSE
- Information from personal observations and electronic media (database information, newspaper or other archives)
- Set up information tracking on each competitor including ads, promotions, new hires
- Their sales cycles, product life and inventory projections
- Sales Style
- Public Relations and Image: from PSE to community opinion, meeting and training staff
- Advertising
- Sales Promotions, event marketing, point of purchase tools, vendor support, sales displays and CO-OP advertising
Budgets are estimates tied to specific allocation of revenues. Unlike conventional financial statements, profit and loss and cash flow statements, there is no standardized format for a marketing budget, and yet, a budget is required to have a successful marketing plan.
- Itemization of expected expenditures
- Annual marketing budget
- After the investment, compute the expected return
- Ask customers what brought them to your establishment
- To keep valued customers, keep in touch with them
- Timing: for many types of products and services there are optimal times for selling
- Meet deadlines, plan every step of the project, and build in extra time
- Put employee tasks in writing with exact instructions and scheduled completion dates
- Specialized knowledge is required for each marketing task Hire professionals to help you save time, money and frustration. Every successful project must have the details worked out and be ready to present before the task is started.
Get the market research needed to plan for the unexpected. Computerized databases at the library or on the Internet can provide the answers you seek. Newspapers have archives to retrieve research on every subject.
- The economy
- Government policies, local and federal
- Cultural and social values
- Lifestyle trends
- Geography
- Technology
- Competition
- Location
- Employees
- Suppliers
This section is the bottom line in your Marketing Plan.
- What is needed to bring more customers to your business, and what is needed to help move them from a 'looker' status into a buyer?
- How to retain your current client base
- How your business can better serve its valued customers
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