Marketing success grows out of a good marketing plan. This formal, written document describes your company's brand marketing and promotional strategies. It outlines who you are, what you do, who your customers are, and how you plan to market to them. Your plan should cover a 12-month period.
The Market Situation section of your plan includes an evaluation of your target market, competitors, business challenges, and your company’s competitive differentiators. It should also describe your company’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities and threats you face.
No one can give you a more objective and unvarnished perspective on your company like your customers can. Ask them what they like about your company, what they dislike, and how your products and services could be improved. There are many ways to garner this feedback, from phone or in-person discussions to outside professional services to online surveys and other tools.
Your unique value proposition describes your company, products and services, and your position in the market. It also defines your target market, ideally including demographic information such as age, gender and household income.
Why do certain companies appear at the top of a Google listing while others are buried on page 4? It doesn’t happen by chance; it’s the science of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
In this section, you spell out your revenue and other goals for your marketing efforts over the next year (and, ideally, beyond), while also providing specifics on how you will achieve them. Each of your marketing objectives should include a description of what you intend to accomplish, including concrete, numerical goals.
Here, you outline the strategies you'll use to achieve your marketing objectives. A good place to start is by defining your marketing mix, which includes "the four Ps": Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Your marketing strategy will also identify your target audience(s). This is a smart way for a small business on a limited budget to focus its marketing efforts.
The final section of your marketing plan describes the marketing tools you'll use to achieve the objectives stated in your plan, and your Marketing Strategy in particular. Include a list of promotional channels you identified in the previous section, as well as a timeline for when you plan to roll out each of those tactics.
