The marketing plan
With so many formats for a marketing plan, you would think that almost
everyone would have an easy time finding some form of plan that they can adopt
and adapt for use in their business. Surprisingly, the majority of professional
services firms and many businesses with less than $20 million in revenues
continue to shoot from the hip.
At a minimum, a marketing plan consists of the following sections.
- Audience - who you are trying to reach
- Objectives - the end-goal; what you want your
plan to accomplish
- Strategies - the broad approaches you will
employ to meet your objectives
- Issues - important considerations that must be
addressed in order for strategies to be effective
- Message points - attention-getters and key
motivators known or expected to be effective for your target audience
- Position - what sets your firm apart from others
- Tactics / events / elements
- the executional building blocks that comprise your promotion plan
- Expectations - your best-guess results for
each campaign, and the program as a whole
- Reinforcements - built-in mechanisms and
check-points to help ensure success
One of the fundamental differences between marketing and selling is that,
while the Selling Concept starts with “what have we got to sell?” – the central
premise of the Marketing Concept – is “what customer groups can we identify, and
what do they need?” Accordingly, it is imperative that any marketing plan begins
with a full, clear and accurate description of your target audience. Include any
information pertinent to identifying, reaching, or stimulating your target
market.
Also include any information you have about your target audience's key needs
and wants. Can you identify any needs expressed by your customers that are as
yet unmet?
Marketing efforts must be directed toward some grand game or overall
objective. Are you trying to increase market share by stealing away customers
from your competitors, or trying to develop new markets? Will your plan be
directed toward getting existing customers to buy more frequently, or to buy
more during each transaction they make with you? How about plans for lead
generation or new product introductions? Clearly define the end result you
desire, and your plan is half done.
With a clear focus on the overall ideal outcome, you can turn to devising
ways to take advantage of opportunities and achieve the objective. Will you work
on identifying heavy users or key growth sectors? Should you concentrate on
building your distribution network? Can you influence purchasing behavior? Must
you focus on margin maximization? The Strategies section of your marketing plan
should break out the key approaches you will employ to meet your goals. You need
to have perfect alignment between your audience, objectives, and strategies.
Everything is not always peaches and cream. There are frequently a host of
issues that must considered and overcome to achieve success in any business
endeavor. These issues may be organizational, competitive, political, financial,
technical, or customer-related. Identify as many as you can, and develop plans
to neutralize each one in the most feasible way possible.
Next you must develop the framework you will use to persuade your target
audience to act. What are their hopes and dreams? What do they fear? What
motivates them? What do they like about your company, its products and services?
What don't they like? Develop a bullet-point list of key ideas, and drive it
into a list of specific appeals that have meaning and salience to your audience.
Avoid trying to be everything to everyone; it doesn't work! Pick your market,
pick your message, and drive your value proposition home!
Positioning is a key concept in marketing, and must be considered when plans
are made. Simply put, your position is how your customers and prospects see your
company, relative to other options in the marketplace. For example, if you are a
software company, are your products costly or value-priced? Are they complicated
or simple to use? Is your installation and training process quick or lengthy?
Once you've chosen a position, develop a phrase to communicate it to
customers. Intuit describes its “Track-It!®” software as “A proven PC management
system that offers more functionality for the price than any other help
desk/inventory solution.”
Alright, you've come a long way. You've defined your Audience, set program
Objectives, determined Strategies for reaching your goals, identified and probed
relevant Issues, listed motivational Message Points, and chosen a defensible
market Position. Now its time to get specific. What, exactly, are you going to
do to make this call come together?
With the information provided by completing the steps up to this point, the
elements and tools you should use for your program should be much more easily
identified. They are determined principally by your answers to the questions
implied in the preceding sections.
List your tactics. Break them into steps. Identify partners and resources.
Assign responsibilities. Set completion dates. With the groundwork done, this
stage is pure project management.
What results do you expect from your efforts? The Expectations stage is where
you consider and mark the boundaries of success and failure. What would be the
minimum acceptable result from each tactic employed? What would be a
blockbuster? Establishing these parameters prior to program launch will help you
accurately appraise your success during and after campaigns.
If you've made it to this stage, your plan is done. But there might be a few
more things you can do to ensure its success. Who are the stakeholders with the
most direct benefit from a successful outcome to your plan? How can you involve
them, and make them active participants in and supporters of your plan? The more
people you can align with and direct toward a common outcome, the more
successful your efforts are likely to be.
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