What is a marketing plan? A marketing plan is activities designed to relate to marketing objectives. Your plan should be flexible and able to change with business and economic changes. Your marketing plan is only as good as the information in it and the effort you spent in thought and creativity. This is a basic marketing plan and does not start to cover the details of a full marketing plan. There is no one way with a marketing plan. This is not a quick or easy process if you are to be completely thorough.
Your mission statement should be based on benefits to present and future customers and should focus on the market(s) your organization is trying to serve. Do not focus on your services, but on the benefits to your customer.
Your marketing plan objective. To make money?? Not really. Your objectives should be realistic, measurable and time specific. Not “To be the BEST in the business” But more like “to achieve XX percent share of (your local area/global/immediate neighborhood…) business within the next XX months” . Your objective should flow from your mission statement
Objectives give you a direction for your business. Objectives should be motivating and challenging and give you something to strive for in a specific direction. Remember, they can always be updated and changed!
SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for (internal) Strengths and Weaknesses, and (external) Opportunities and Threats.
Strengths and weaknesses are about your organizational resources, such as costs, marketing skills, financial resources, company brand, capabilities and available technology – technology you already have or are planning on getting in the near future. Determine what you have – those are your strengths, strengths are used to develop your competitive advantage. Then look at what you are lacking – those are your weaknesses.
Opportunities and threats are about the forces, events and relationships with your external environment. The economy right now could be an opportunity and a threat to your business. An opportunity to move into a slot that someone has left vacant, or a threat since people are more likely to be cutting costs themselves.
Performing a SWOT analysis allows you to identify your competitive advantage – what is superior to your competition – where do you need to be careful?
The Four Ps. Product, Place, Promotion and Pricing. This is your marketing mix. A unique blend designed to create a mutually satisfying exchange with your target market.
Product – You must know your product in order to advertise it at it’s best. Product needs to offer your customer value for the money. My product is my experience in administrative duties for businesses. I am selling ME. Most service companies are doing the same. They are selling their or their employees expertise.
Place (distribution) strategies – how are you going to make your product available to your customers so they get what they want when they want?
Promotion strategies- this mix includes advertising, networking, public relations, personal selling – all part of promotion of your business. We want to inform and educate our target market of our product. How you go about doing that depends on your creativity and your budget. Think about those girls who work in the coffee huts in bikinis. That was cheap!! And they got press about it – a lot of press – and even negative press (for them) increased their business. You may not want to go to those lengths – there is no way I will work in my office in shorts, much less a bikini, but I am sure you can think of a lot of creative ways to get the word out there.
Pricing strategies – price is the most flexible of the four Ps. This is an important competitive weapon that you can use by way of simply lowering your price, or by offering discounts or coupons. Try not to go too overboard in being competitive and undercutting the competition, this could end up with you in the red if you cut into your costs too much.
Once you have determined your SWOT and the Four Ps, then you must follow up on your plan. Just making the plan will not make your business a success. You have to implement your plan and reevaluate your plan on a regular basis to make sure you are still staying competitive and making money.
This is a VERY simplistic overview of a marketing plan. Check the web, google “free marketing plan templates” for more information. I am not in marketing, this is just stuff I have learned lately trying to get my business off the ground. I found a site for free templates that I really liked HERE.
Good luck on all your marketing endeavors.
