What Is A Marketing Plan And Why Do You Need One For Your Business
What is a marketing plan, how do I write a marketing plan and why do I need a marketing plan? If you are asking these questions this is the article for you. To understand what marketing can do for your business I think Peter Drucker explained it best when he said "The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits them and sells itself."
What Is A Marketing Plan
A marketing plan is a written comprehensive blueprint document that details the necessary actions to achieve one or more marketing objectives. The marketing plan should include both the goals, performance metrics, strategy, tactics and rationale for each. It should guide the organization's every action in relation to developing, pricing, distributing and promoting the organization, its products and services.
To watch a video that explains what a marketing plan is go to our Youtube channel.
Components Of A Marketing Plan
- your brands positioning and the rationale for picking that positioning
- your target customer(s) and the rationale for picking that target or targets
- a competitive analysis
- a product portfolio analysis
- a product plan
- a pricing plan
- a distribution plan
- a promotional plan
- a budget outlining how much you will spend against each activity
- a focus chart (showing what portion of your focus or how many hours will go towards each activity
To watch a video that describes the components of a marketing plan and gives visual examples of each of the necessary components go to our Youtube channel.
How To Write A Marketing Plan
The foundation of a solid marketing plan is a solid marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy should come from the research, questions you ask your self and brainstorming completed during the process of creating your marketing plan
1. Create A Format To Follow
2. Select The Necessary Questions You Need To Ask Yourself
3. Conduct Research
4. Answer the Questions
5. Conduct Brainstorming
6. Finalize The Plan
Why Your Business Needs A Marketing Plan
Marketing is what separates successful companies from unsuccessful companies. If a company has great marketing, it can have a substandard product or service and still be successful. This is sad but true. Now on the other hand, if a business has great marketing coupled with a great product or service the results can be mind boggling. Take a look at all of the large companies you know today. At one point in time they were all small companies...they were not always large. When you look at what all large companies have in common you will see that all large successful companies have been able to successfully use the power of marketing. Marketing is a powerful tool that, if done well, it can propel any business' success to heights beyond your wildest dreams. In order to be successful at marketing the very first step requires having a plan. Start creating a plan today, to get the marketing of your business moving in the right direction.
Get a free marketing plan for your business now because having a marketing plan is critical to your success.
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