What is a Marketing Plan
Consumers have a huge selection of options to choose from. It is impossible for one person to buy everything, even with an unlimited budget. Therefore it is important that companies identify which type of consumer might be interested in buying their product.
A marketing plan is a written outline of the efforts that your organization will undertake in order to carry out an effective marketing strategy.
The purpose of the marketing plan is to detail the aims and objectives of the company and how the advertising will be carried out.
Specific marketing plans are very often created for specific products or groups of products. Products that differ enough will have different customer bases and so marketing techniques will be adjusted to better optimize the advertising.
A complete marketing plan will include clear measurable goals that have timeline in which they will be completed. It will also include a financial component as to the cost of the marketing efforts and targets of increased revenue due to the marketing.
Regardless of the size of the organization, the parts of a marketing plan (or the marketing section of a business plan) will include some mandatory information.
Some organizations will need to be more detailed in their scope of their marketing however.
There are four target markets that one can consider: the end consumer, other businesses (private sector), government (various levels), and partners (distributors, co-producers). A specific marketing plan should be made for each of the company's markets.
A marketing plan outline should include sections such as:
- Business Objectives - If not already done so in a complete Business Plan, state your business objectives which is basically a summary of what your goals are with the business as well as measureable goals of what the marketing is to achieve.
- Analysis of your current market and target audience - Details about what makes them good targets for your products, such as needs (value drivers), salary ranges, male/female, car owners, etc.
- Analysis of competitors - Strengths, weaknesses, and market share
- Pricing strategies for your products or services - A detailed overview of list prices, volume discounts, payment terms and options, rebates and coupons, etc.
- Distribution strategy of your products or services - How will your products be sold, discuss retail venues, distribution channels.
- Business location - If a storefront, how does this effect your marketing strategy.
- Budgets - Advertising and marketing expense budget. Basically how much you will be spending for advertising. Can be a fixed number, or a percentage of sales for example.
- Advertising venues that will be used - Duscuss all methods of advertising that will be used such direct mail, yellow pages, internet, radio, tv . . .
- Timing and deadlines of all advertising activities - Each advertising method will have a timeline attached to it. This length of time should be long enough to be able to determine some metrics so that a decision can be made whether to continue or not.
- Forecasts - A projections of what your advertising will achieve. Specific statements such as number of customers or sales per dollar spent for example.
Including sections such as the ones listed above should help you define your marketing strategy objectives. Other subsections can be added to fill out these main heading categories, but overall, a complete marketing plan will at least cover many of these points.
In summary the basic questions that need to be answered with a marketing plan are:
- Who are our customers?
- Why do our customers buy from us?
- How can I best reach those customers?
- What is the best way to motivate those customers to purchase?
- What makes us different than our competition?
By making sure that you know the answer to these questions, your company will have a much better chance at success than if you were flying blindly into the business world.
A lot of resources go into starting and running a business, take the time you need to properly research and write up your marketing plan. You will be glad you did.
Now that you know what a merketing is and why it is so important, the next article is designed to help you get ideas about how you can go about advertising your business.
This is the second article in our marketing plan tutorial basics section, continue reading the next article below.