How to write a comprehensive plan for marketing in 6 (½) Steps

A written marketing plan is extremely important for any company. A well structured plan will help you manage the performance of your business and achieve your goals. It will bring the structure to what you're doing, you help raise money, motivate you and your team, identify your strengths and weaknesses, and much more.

But what you should include in your marketing plan?

This is a good question and one that can be answered in the following 6 (half) steps.

Step 1 - The Marketing Audit

You can not put together a plan for where you want to take your business, without first understanding where the business is now. Using some simple tools such as SWOT and PEST analysis can examine both the internal operations and external environment.

Try to answer all these questions and more:

What is your product, the characteristics and identity and how is it different?

Because customers want to buy?

Where you sell your product and how you set your prices?

Who are your competitors, what are their products and services?

What geographic areas are targeting you?

What is the monetary value of the market?

After completing a deep reflection, you are ready to think about where you want to take your business, so go to step 2.

Step 2 - The Mission

An effective marketing plan must include a statement of mission. It 's essentially the primary purpose or direction for your business and help you to understand and explain what your stakeholders want to achieve.

It should be a top-level guidance for the management of undertakings, for example:

Bob Mobile printers provide affordable and quality printing services still in New York City based small and medium enterprises to delight its customers with every order.

It should not be too specific or include all the measures, as these come forward in the plan, but needs to give your company a direction.

Step 3 - Objectives, strategy and measures

Now it's time to get more specific. The objectives are to explain where you actually want to achieve. For example, Chris Fish, a fish monger high street, has the goal of being the first choice on the local high street for fresh fish.

His strategy is therefore as actually going to do this. If Chris has decided to sell the fish of the highest quality, at a premium price, with quality service. He hopes that this will differentiate its offering to the local supermarket.

The measure is thus like Chris will decide if he has his right strategy, marketing it like to call the control measure.

He has set a short-term financial goal of increasing its turnover by 15% in the first year. He will also measure customer satisfaction and has set a target that 95% of customers will be happy to recommend him to friends and relatives.

Step 4 - Customer Segmentation

After identifying the measures of your goals, strategy and performance, is the next need to think about your customers. Marketing is so much to know your customers, because it is advertising or attend a trade fair. Think about who they are, what they like and dislike, where they do business, what motivates them, what are their characteristics and they read the newspapers.

The more you can profile the customers, the better we can address the supply and marketing communications.

Step 5 - The Marketing Communications Plan

At this stage it is time to think about how you communicate with customers. This is all to tell your customers who you are, what you sell and most importantly, motivate them to do business with you. To be effective you must consider a multilevel marketing approach that is more than one communication activities at any time.

You should start by identifying the first three posts. For example, Chris Fish has the three best messages to send to its target audience:

1. Chris stocks only fresh fish and higher quality,

2. Chris Fish activity is high on the local road,

3. Chris the fish has an online ordering service with free shipping for orders over $ 10.

Once Chris has identified its first three posts, you can plan how to transmit these to its target audience.

Basically for each means of communication must be asked: why am I doing this? If you can answer this quickly and clearly, then it could be the perfect communication vehicle for the company. Consider also what you want to achieve by any means.

Step 6 - Budget and Cash Flow

So we are into the most painful part, what will it cost? My advice is to look at your annual namely the projection of cash flow which do you expect sales in the first year. Once you have in mind this number can identify the percentage of revenue that you want to reinvest in your business. It could be anything, typically between 1-10%, but every company is different.

Remember that marketing is an investment for your business success and not just an expense.

Step 6 (½) - How to Buy-in from your team

The final step is probably the most difficult of all, it is crucial. Present your plan to your employees, family members, friends and anyone with an interest in the success of your business. This will help generate support and to keep motivated.

Do not forget, your marketing plan must be kept on the desk and reviewed periodically, at least once a quarter. If you are going to make the effort to write a plan you might as well use it effectively ....