Developing A Marketing Plan: Use A Good Marketing Plan To Guide The Strategic and Tactical Direction of Your Business
Developing A Marketing Plan: Use A Good Marketing Plan To Guide The Strategic and Tactical Direction of Your Business
Developing A Marketing Plan: Use A Good Marketing Plan To Guide The Strategic and Tactical Direction of Your Business
Marketing Plan
Use a good Marketing
Plan to guide the
strategic and tactical
direction of your
Learning Objectives
At the end of this module, you will be able to:
Identify the importance and the need for a good Marketing
Plan.
List the key components of a Marketing Plan and its details.
Track the Marketing Plan in tandem with your overall business
plan.
Executive Summary
A Marketing Plan is at the core of directing and coordinating
all marketing efforts within a firm.
It usually operates at two levels, strategic and tactical:
strategic to identify the overall market play and tactical to
execute on the marketing plan.
A Marketing Plan does not need to be long or expensive to
put together. If it is carefully researched, thoughtfully
considered, and evaluated, it will help your firm achieve its
goals.
Overall Planning
Process
You should create and
implement your Marketing Plan.
Some major steps involved in
this process are:
Planning
Implementing
Gaining Feedback and Control
Measuring results
Diagnosing results
Taking corrective action
The Marketing
Challenge
Ask yourself these five critical questions:
1. What is unique about your business idea? What is the general
need that your product or service aims to meet?
2. Who is your target buyer? Who buys your product or service
now, and who do you really want to sell to?
3. Who are your competitors? How can your small business
effectively compete in your chosen market?
4. What positioning message do you want to communicate to
your target buyers? How can you position your business or
product to let people know about your product?
5. What is your sales strategy? How will you get your product or
service in the hands of your customers?
The 10 Elements of a
Good Marketing Plan
A good Marketing Plan includes these 10 elements:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
1. Describe Your
Business
Small business owners often describe themselves by their
product or services; however, business must be viewed as a
customer-satisfying process, not goods-producing.
Describe your business in detail and clearly identify goals
and objectives.
Answer the following questions:
2. Conduct a Situation
Analysis
A situation analysis details the context
Weaknes
for your marketing efforts by
Strengths
ses
considering internal and external
factors that could influence your
marketing strategy.
Opportuni
Threats
This section of the plan could include a
ties
SWOT analysis to summarize your
Strengths,
Weaknesses,
Opportunities
Strengths:
assets or a resources
that can be used to improve
and
Threats.
your
business competitive position.
Weaknesses: resources or capabilities that may cause your
business to have a less competitive position.
Opportunities: situations or conditions arising from a business
strengths, or set of positive externalities.
Threats: problems that focus on your weaknesses and which
can create a potentially negative situation.
Developing a Marketing Plan
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3. Define Your
Customers
Defining your market does not need to be a difficult process. You do not
need a huge market base, but you need to be realistic and your market
needs to be well-defined.
Who are your competitors, and who do they target?
Who is your perfect customer and client base?
What is your current customer base (in terms of age, sex, income, and
geographic location)?
What habits do your customers and potential customers share? Where do
they shop, what do they read, watch, listen to?
What prospective customers are you currently not reaching? How can you
reach them?
What qualities do your customers value most about your product or
service? Do they value selection, convenience, service, reliability,
availability, or affordability?
What qualities about your product or service do you need to improve?
How can they be adjusted to serve your customers better?
Developing a Marketing Plan
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4. Strategize Your
Market Entry
Once you have identified what is unique about your
business and who your target buyers are, focus on your
competition:
Identify your direct competitors and learn what they do.
Sharpen your decisions about the best business category
and market segment in which to compete.
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5. Forecast Sales or
Demand Measurement
Sales forecasting provides the basis for comparison over a
period of time.
Market demand is the total volume that could be bought by
a defined customer group in, a defined geographical area,
in a defined time period, and under a defined marketing
program.
You should:
Correctly identify and estimate current demand by considering
total market potential, market share, and expected sales.
Estimate future demand by considering past sales patterns,
consumer trends, and overall market projections.
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6. Define Your
Marketing Budget
(Slide 1
of 2)
Marketing budgets, especially in small and mid-sized
businesses, are often arbitrarily set as either x% of planned
revenue or y% over the prior year's marketing budget.
Use targeted budgeting to more intelligently set your budget
based on company objectives.
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6. Define Your
Marketing Budget
(Slide 2
of 2)
Answer the following questions:
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7. Integrate Your
Marketing
Integrate
marketing communication to
A
Communication
consolidate marketing tools, approaches,
COLLABORATI
VE APPROACH
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8. Identify Sales
Channels
Part of the challenge of marketing is figuring out which distribution
method to use for your business.
Include all relevant distribution channels:
Retail: Stores selling to final consumer buyers (one store, or a chain of
stores).
Wholesale: An intermediary distribution channel that usually sells to
retail stores.
Direct mail: Generally catalog merchants that sell directly to consumers.
Telemarketing: Merchants selling directly to consumer buyers at retail
via phones.
Cyber-Marketing: Merchants selling directly to consumer buyers at retail
prices, or business-to-business products and services at wholesale prices
via computer networks.
Sales force: Salaried employees of a company or independent
commissioned representatives who usually sell products for more than one
company.
Developing a Marketing Plan
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9. Track Marketing
Activities
Tracking helps monitor the effectiveness of each marketing activity and
is especially helpful with your overall program evaluation.
Include procedures for tracking each type of marketing activity you are
using.
Some examples are:
Display advertising: With traditional consumer publications, tracking can be
done through the use of different phone numbers, special offers (specific to
that advertisement or publication), or reference to a specific department.
Internet marketing: Usually, this is easily tracked by monitoring web traffic.
Trade shows: A trade shows effectiveness can be tracked by collecting the
right information at the show and following up on it.
Database: Before your Marketing Plan is kicked off, make sure you have the
database structure in place to record this information.
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