Do you want more customers, more income, and more profitability? Then, you probably need an excellent marketing strategy. But, strategy without a plan doesn’t bring you the success that you want. So, you will need an excellent marketing plan.
Everything that you do and want to accomplish will require some type of planning activity. Sometimes you simply don’t have a written plan but you make a plan in your mind. Plans are outcomes of planning activities where you address what you need to do to achieve something you want to achieve.
The marketing function is one of the most important functions of your company and a vital part of your entrepreneurial success. Without marketing your businesses will don’t have or will have a very low number of customers. Without customers or with a very low number of customers, you can’t sell enough quantity of your products and services. Without enough sales, you don’t have enough revenue. Without enough revenue, you can’t make a profit.
Marketing presents a continuous process that every business must perform from the beginning. If marketing is a process then a marketing plan is the tool for the implementation of that process.
Writing such a plan is not a simple task. But, if you have one, it will help you to know what action steps you need to take in order to attract enough and the right type of customers for your business.
Marketing Plan: What Is It?
According to MSP Marketing experts JumpFactor, a marketing plan is a blueprint for the activities related to communication of the messages about your products or services, or your business as general to your customers or potential customers.
In other words, it is a detailed roadmap that outlines all your marketing strategies, tactics, activities, costs, and projected results over a period of time. It is the detailed written document setting the necessary marketing actions that your business needs to take to achieve one or more marketing objectives. This plan contains various strategies formulated to achieve business growth and profit objectives.
So, a marketing plan outlines the specific actions you want to take in order to build interest to potential customers and clients about your products and/or services. Then to persuade them to buy the product and/or services that you are offering.
The Purpose of Your Marketing Plan
The purpose of the marketing plan is to:
- coordinate your business goals,
- define the market to create proper market segmentation,
- define the marketing mix and
- systematize activities about chosen marketing strategies.
Continuity of the Marketing Plan
While a marketing plan will give you an important part of activities for your business, every entrepreneur should update it regularly. This plan once has been written needs to be updated on a regular basis. You must remember that marketing and its activity planning is not something to be carried out only once.
For example, you can choose 10 different marketing weapons for the next year. If you measure the effects of the implementation of those marketing weapons, you can easily see that some of them will work well, but some of them will not give you desired, or targeted results. You must change something in those marketing weapons that not give you desired results. Maybe you will change some marketing weapons with the new one.
Another example is the changes in business strategies that also must be included in the marketing plan. This will also require the change of marketing strategies and marketing objectives, that on the other side will require a change in marketing weapons you will use.
It can be a simple Microsoft Word file or maybe Microsoft Excel that you can modify whenever you need to modify it. It is not a static document, but a very dynamic document that will be changed on a continuous base.
You must remember that a good marketing plan is something that never ends, and maintaining a plan is an ongoing process.
Why You Need Such a Plan?
One of the biggest mistakes is when entrepreneurs neglect to develop a solid marketing plan.
With a good marketing plan you can:
- Follow up on marketing activities and see what is good and what is not good.
- Analyze your market and you will have solid knowledge about your target customers, market segments, your strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats.
- Timely change your marketing strategies and tactics. Learn about the top marketing tactics of global brands.
- Know how you spend your marketing money.
- Know real ROI from your marketing money.
Implementation
Implementation is a vital step for every plan, not the only marketing plan. Your marketing plan is effective only if you have the capacity to implement it.
Do you really need a plan if you don’t want to implement it?
You must implement every step covered in your plan if you want your marketing activities to be effective. If you implement every activity obtained in one marketing plan you will know what to exclude next year, or what to add to new activities.
Because of that, you must to:
- Make a great analysis of your target market.
- Choose the best marketing weapons for that target market.
- Write a good marketing plan.
- Implement activities from your marketing plan.
- Check the implementation process.
- Improve your marketing plan for the next planning period.
If you are preparing for the startup, read about marketing before the startup stage.
