How to Write a Marketing Plan
A good marketing plan helps your organization to define its goals and develop a series of activities to achieve those goals. The key to writing a good marketing plan is to keep it simple when you start, but return often to revise and update your marketing plan.
Here are a few basic elements to get you started. You can expand from these marketing plan essentials as your needs require additional details. Your marketing plan should:
1) Describe the Unique Solution Your Company Provides
What products, or services do you provide to the market. Often described as an elevator pitch, you should be able to quickly describe your solution to a prospect within 20 seconds. Think about this as your purpose. What need was identified in the market that led to the development of your solution to fulfill that need.
2) Define Your Target Market
When organizations write the marketing plan, defining the target market often proves to be the most challenging aspect of the plan. However, if you do not choose the right markets to target, you will often never achieve complete success. Too often companies see that their solution can serve the needs of multiple markets and they go off trying to establish multiple markets at the same time. Ultimately this may lead to failure because they overextended themselves and didn't successfully meet the needs of any market. Choose a well-defined market when you write your marketing plan and stick to it until the market dictates a change.
3) Write the Benefits of Your Products or Services
When companies describe their products and services, they often talk in features, or advantages, when what the customer really wants are benefits. If your customer ever says to you, "Hey that's great, but what's in it for me?" then you are guilty of talking features instead of benefits. Features describe a product, or service, but the benefits help your customers understand how they'll use it, and most importantly why they will use it.
4) How will You Position Your Products or Services
Take a position and defend it. For your customers to make a decision, they need to know what you have to offer and why it is different from your competition. We see this most readily with consumer product as companies seek to define their products and build their brand. Your positioning defines your location in the market and will drive your price and how you market your products or services. Finish the statement "we want to be known as ____________" and you will have the first piece of your positioning.
5) Define Your Marketing Methods
How do you plan to tell the world about your products and services. We refer to this as the integrated marketing communications plan. The communications plan defines the methods you will use to promote your products or services, for example, advertising, online marketing, and/or public relations. For each of these aspects of the communications plan, you'll need to choose the proper deliver vehicle, budget and resources to implement them. The best communications plan is an integrated program that works together to promote a consistent message to your customers.
INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS PLAN
What Does Integrated Mean?
An integrated marketing communications plan has all parts of your tactics working together. For example, if your marketing communications plan calls for print advertising, the same theme of your print ads should be reflected on your web site. If your customer gets the same message and visual clues in both places, they are much more likely to comprehend your marketing message. By doing this, you will build your brand with that customer who will remember you when they are ready to buy.
Elements of the Integrated Marketing Communications Plan
Your plan should include consideration of marketing methods such as:
Web site: What does your web site say about your company? Is it informative, easy to use, ecommerce ready? Your web site is available at all times, is it ready to speak for you when you are not available.
Advertising: print, online, radio, or tv. Choose the advertising medium(s) that gets your message to your target audience where they are likely to be ready to receive it. Use a consistent, repetitive approach to build awareness and recall.
Marketing Collateral: brochures, case studies, white papers. Your materials build and define your brand and provide the customer with an important look at your positioning and messages.
Online Marketing: advertising, opt-in email marketing and links from other sites. Your customers are online and you should use the appropriate methods to reach and retain them.
Trade shows: How many individual meetings would you need to setup to equal the number you can have at a trade show. No other opportunity affords you the ability to meet directly with so many customers in a condensed time frame.
Direct mail, personal selling, networking and many more methods allow you to get your message to the customer.
Budget and allocate resources
Your integrated marketing communications plan must have a target budget and resources assigned to each element of the plan. Depending on the size of your budget, you will probably need to make trade-offs between methods to achieve your goals. In addition, you need to have the internal, or external resources aligned to carry out the plan.
A good marketing communications plan can take your marketing efforts to the next level. Test what works and feed the information back into the plan.
6) The Cost and Resources Needed
Define your budget and your resources. Marketing is an investment in your company that must be consistent and steady to produce results. Without a consistent approach you will not be able to achieve the goals your established for the organization. Your budget and resources - both internal and external should be sufficient to sustain the plan.
7) Revisit and Refine Your Marketing Plan
Once you write a marketing plan be sure to come back and revisit it often. You may find aspects of the plan that need to be updated, or modified to reflect changes in the market. Set specific goals within your marketing plan and evaluate your performance against those goals.
Good luck with your marketing plan. Once you get it in writing, you now have a plan to excel.
Here is an Outline for your Marketing Plan:
MARKETING PLAN OUTLINE
I. Executive Summary
A high-level summary of the Marketing Plan.
II. The Goals
Brief description of the product or service to be marketed with its associated goals, such as sales figures and strategic goals.
III. Situation Analysis
Company Analysis
· Goals
· Focus
· Culture
· Strengths
· Weakness
· Market Share
Customer Analysis
· Number
· Type
· Value drivers
· Decision Process
· Concentration of customers base for particular products / services
Competitor Analysis
· Market Position
· Strengths
· Weakness
· Market Shares
Collaborators
· Subsidiaries, joint ventures, and distributors, etc.
Climate
Macro-environmental PEST Analysis
· Political and legal environment
· Economic environment
· Social and Cultural environment
· Technological environment
SWOT Analysis
A SWOT Analysis of the business environment can be performed by organizing the environmental factors as follows:
· The firm’s internal attributes can be classed as strengths and weaknesses
· The external environment presents opportunities and threats
IV. Market Segmentation
Present a description of the market segmentation as follows:
Segment 1
· Description
· Percent of Sales
· What they want
· How they use product / service
· Support requirements
· How to reach them
· Price sensitivity
Segment 2
.
.
.
V. Alternative Marketing Strategies
List and discuss the alternatives that were considered before arriving at the recommended strategy. Alternatives might include discontinuing a product, rebranding, positioning as a premium or value product, etc.
VI. Selected Marketing Strategy
Discuss why the strategy was selected, then the marketing mix decisions of product, price, place (distribution), and promotion.
Product / Service
The Product(s) / Service(s) decisions should consider the product’s advantages and how they will be leveraged. Product decisions should include
· Brand name
· Quality
· Scope of product line / service
· Warranty
· Packaging (If applicable)
Price
Discuss pricing strategy, expected volume, and decisions for the following pricing variables:
· List prices
· Discounts
· Bundling
· Payment terms and financing options
Distribution (Place)
Decision variables include:
· Distribution channels, such as direct, retail, distributors & intermediates
· Motivating the channel – for example, distributor margins
· Criteria for evaluating distributors
· Locations
· Logistics, including transportation, warehousing, and other fulfillment
Promotion
· Advertising, including how much and which media
· Public relations
· Promotional programs
· Budget determine break-even point for any additional spending on Promotional Programs
· Projected results of the promotional programs
· Trade Fairs
· Budget determine break-even point for any additional spending on Trade Fairs
· Projected results from the participation on Trade Fairs
· Advertising including how much and which media
· Public Relations
VII. Short & Long Term Projections
The selected strategy’s immediate effects, expected long-term results, and any special actions required to achieve them. This section may include forecasts of revenue and expenses as well as the results of a break-even analysis.
VIII. Conclusion
Summarize all of the above
Appendix
Exhibits
Calculations of market size, commissions, profit margins, break even analyses, etc…
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