6 Easy Steps To Make Your Marketing Plan

To make a marketing plan is to design the detailed roadmap of your business. It provides you with each detail you need to know to achieve your target and promote your business successfully.

"Only the dead fish follow the stream".

Today, the business world is a huge red ocean. There are thousands of sharks, cachalots and millions of types of other fish struggling with each other. Your company is one of these millions in bleeding and boiling environment. If you would like to stay alive and continue your well-being as an organization, you have to be able to assess your opportunities and choose the exact direction to achieve your goals. A marketing plan is merely a detailed roadmap of your business. To make a marketing plan provides you with each detail you, need to know to achieve your target and promote your business successfully. Before starting to make a plan, there are some considerations related to business nature you should take into account.  Following these steps, you can easily make the plan effectively.

1. Know your business.

This part is almost the same as the introduction of your business plan. Provide detail about the type and nature of your business. In this part of the plan, give a general overview of operations and business transactions. What kind of services does your business offer to customers? Are you running the business online or offline? What is the structure of your business organization? Is your business LLC or Partnership? In which sector is your business operating? Generally, try to answer these questions in this part of your marketing plan.

2. Assess the environment.

Sometimes, effective business executives use SWOT analysis to evaluate the business environment to make the marketing plan perfect. SWOT analysis evaluates both internal and external environment, potential opportunities and challenges you can face.

Created using Xtensio free SWOT analysis template.

3. Know your enemies.

Of course, it would be a dream come true if you operated in silence and never had to worry about any opponents stealing your customers. Unfortunately, it is not the way business works. Every opportunity exists for all market participants, in this case, your competitors. That is why you have to be aware of any movement or strategies of your opponent to stand out. Don’t panic. It is what every business owner deals with. You should take into account every strategic movement of your competitors make in the market and design action plan for this.

 Thus, it would be helpful to differentiate yourself from the others, if you are armed with all sorts of information and knowledge about your competitors. To have a perceived value by your customer, you should always try to offer something distinctive from others. Keep tracking your competitors constantly, and try to stand out. Please, note that only who makes a difference can stay alive in business.

4. Define your objective and set a goal

Here is the exciting part. What do you have in your mind? What kinds of targets would you like to accomplish?  Do you have specific aims to hit this year? Most businesses find it difficult to make realistic and encouraging goals. Depending on your situation, resources and operating capacity, your organizational goals can be different. For example, make the sales double this year, offer a new product to the market, increase market share by 20%, or to get 100k likes on Facebook. It is better to consider organizational capacity, resources and employees’ interests to make a realistic and motivational goal to achieve.

5. Build up organizational strategy.

After analyzing all sorts of organizational power and make the goals to accomplish, it is time to outline strategies you will pursue to reach these objectives. The effective plan includes a marketing strategy. It should be a detailed plan that contains the ways and methods showing how you will achieve your business goals. It is recommended to take each target separately, listing them as concrete steps respectively. Of course, to make strategies under a specific time frame will help you measure effectiveness in further. It worth to notify that, building up an effective marketing strategy is not an easy process as it sounds.

In modern business literature, mainly Marketing Mix concept is used to build up a marketing strategy. It is one of the best tools to determine the required strategies and tactics to accomplish organizational goals within limited resources. It contains four key elements such as product, price, place, and promotion. Considering these steps will help you to make your plan perfect.

Product- Define the exact characteristics of the product you offer to customers. It includes determinants from quality ingredients of the product to packaging and design elements. Especially, design a positioning plan for each product. Positioning plan defines the distinctive characteristics of your products and services.

Price- Determine sales price of the product. To get a high market share and increase growth sales, it is significant to evaluate factors which affect the product price. To make an effective pricing plan plays a crucial role in the successful product cycle. For example, if you offer a new product to the market, it could be better to use market skimming pricing strategy (to make high prices to collect early profitable customers in a short period). Or market penetration (setting low prices to increase market share quickly ) is another pricing plan. Of course, these tactics have different versions depending on nature and other characteristics of the business.

Place - effective placement of the product is one of the critical factors to make a  marketing plan successfully. So make sure that your product is available for your customers, and they have convenient and comfortable access to get your product. You should plan how you will deliver your products to your customers.

Promotion- Choose the convenient way of communication method to inform customers about your product and business offers continuously. To make an effective advertising plan, design PR campaigns and taste promotion events are elements of promotion. It would be better to include these marketing activities in your plan. Make sure that you are able to keep your customer up-to-date about any message you would like to give them.

6. Budget planning.

Do you like numbers? If yes, here is the most interesting part. Within the limited capital resources, you should calculate the costs of each of the marketing events and estimate further expenses to allocate enough capital. How much will you need to finance each marketing activities? There can be a range of different marketing activities in your plan. Which one would you prefer to spend more money? An effective plan contains answers to these questions.

Usually, big companies make two types of budget plan.

1. Target plan which contains 3-4% of your top-line revenue. When you use that type of budget plan, you should consider the previous year’s information and results.

2. A stretch plan which contains more than 5% of your top-line revenue.

Mainly, ambitious business owners prefer to make a stretch budget plan, because they undertake higher risks to make more profit. Before, assigning a budget plan, make sure that, your resources and goals are aligned appropriately. Remember, it is better to be realistic and honest with yourself when you make a budget plan.

Did you complete all these steps of your marketing plan separately? Congratulations. There you have it. To make the plan effectively, all you need is just put them all together. To make a plan successful, it entirely depends on how you will make choices which suit best your own business. Don’t forget, a plan can vary from simple to comprehensive. However, regardless of what size and volume your plan is,  this structure and steps above can guide you to get started. Otherwise, you can apply to our company to get online services towards to digital assessment of marketing plan. Our professional team will help you to make a plan perfect through digital information analysis.