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Marketing Plan Why is a marketing plan important? Very few businesses have an accounting plan or manufacturing plan, so why the focus on marketing? Unlike most other aspects of your business, marketing involves risks. There's just no way to know how your advertising is going to work, how your grand opening will go or how much word of mouth you'll be able to generate. You could ignore it. Many companies blindly carry on, investing more in marketing when sales are good, and cut back when sales drop. When an ad doesn't pull right away it's killed. And when something works, they usually get tired of it and move on to something else. Does this sound as backwards to you as it does to me? The marketing plan is the first key to success. Zig Ziglar tells the story of the airplane pilot who takes off on a flight from Dallas to New York, gets blown a little off course and returns to Dallas to start over again. Very few flights would ever reach their destination if pilots were this shaky in their ability to deal with setbacks. The key advantage of a marketing plan is that it will allow you to see the ultimate goal. With the end in mind, minor setbacks and failures along the way help clarify the plan even more. What's more, with a marketing plan in your hands you will be able to measure, record and track how your marketing plan is doing in regards to meeting your goal. You can then adjust, revise or increase certain aspects to reach your goal without disturbing the delicate balance of all the elements of your plan. There are 2 main parts of a marketing plan - Identifying your specific market. And Identifying your strategy to reach that market. Identify
your Market Your
target market - Identifying your specific piece of the industry
market Your
market strategy We'll go through each of these steps and help you create your own plan. The marketing plan you create will be geared towards a particular product or service. Even though you may have dozens, hundreds or thousands of products, your marketing plan is for ONE product or service. Potential Market The size of the total market should be measured in dollars of sales per year, but often to get the dollar figure you first have to estimate the number of potential customers and their average purchases, and then do some calculations. You will split the market with competitors, so market shares become important. Your market share, in turn, will depend on how you compare to your competitors. Following is a list of places to look for figures on the number of customers available and their estimated spending in your field. Record the numbers you find, you will use these, and the source for the marketing plan part of your business plan.
Your target market is your primary customers. Many businesses also draw significant numbers of customers from other - secondary - market segments. While these segments may not be your main source (s) of customers, the total business you could get from these segments can be very important So answer the following questions about both your primary or target customers and any other customers you may find.
To deal with competition, you must understand who your competitors are, how they compete, and how you can make your business different enough to offer more value to your customers. Direct competition offer products and/or services similar to the ones your business sells. Indirect competitors offer products and/or services different from the ones you sell but which to some extent meet the same needs. (I.e.: video rental and movie theaters)
What will be your marketing policies? You need to establish basic policies in combinations of pricing, promotion, product quality, and customer service, and examine how they differentiate your from the competition. Another important aspect of your marketing policy will be the kind and level of sales effort to be made. The method of selling is to some extent determined by the traditions in your kind of business and to some extent determined by your own personality and sales motivation. Answer these questions and sum them up in a paragraph - for your policy.
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