Any marketing plan is as good as the effort put into it.
One-size-fits-all marketing plans won't cut it when marketing, promotions and advertising must co-exist to create a profitable brand. A master marketing plan is the cornerstone of creating that brand. It helps coordinate and synthesize your objectives, strategies, budget and analysis across that marketing mix of promotions and advertising so you can run an effective integrated marketing campaign both digitally and traditionally.
Analyze Your Marketplace
Determining your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are crucial to your business's bottom line. This is a SWOT analysis. Assessing those strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats internally and externally are the first steps in an effective marketing plan. Effective means advancing toward your marketing goals. It is a cumulative process, one not accomplished with any one element in isolation. This is why your marketplace analysis, your SWOT, is so important as the beginning element of your marketing plan. Communication, competition, promotional opportunity, target market and consumer analyses give you a handle on create that all-important relationship with your potential customer and define your brand to those customers.
Determine Marketing Objectives
Defining your marketing objectives is different than defining your market goals. Your objectives help you reach your goals in areas such as your audience target, your competitive position, market share and the actions you want your consumer to take regarding your products or services. An objective might be to create a 10 percent raise in consumer spending in the age group 18-35. A goal based on that objective might be to increase your bottom line by raising sales 12 percent overall in all age groups. Knowing your objectives and defining them formally in your marketing plan gives you a blueprint to reach goals.
Crunch the Numbers
Marketing objectives give way to creating or honing your marketing budget. Marketing budgets take into account your company's direct and indirect marketing expenses. Sample direct expenses include print and online advertising costs, printing, radio spots or TV ads and employee and contractor payments. Indirect expenses may include education and research and development. Direct expense allocations usually are upfront and straightforward, whereas indirect expenses often are tangent to those direct expenses. An example of an indirect expense is employee continuing education. Define your budget in your marketing plan and specify where to find that budget in detail.
Find Your Strategy
The budget is set, and you know the objectives. Now you must define and finalize the strategy to reach your market goals. An effective marketing plan lists strategies to differentiate your company and its products or services among competitors and targeted consumers. Technology can help you position your company and create brand loyalty. Disclose technological and traditional mass-media strategies in your marketing plan. Specific strategic elements should include market segmentation, corporate, corporate image, brand development, brand positioning, distribution, services, business-to-business and public relations strategies.
Supporting Marketing Strategy
Day-to-day marketing support tactics can make or break a company. Mapping out those tactics in your marketing plan gives you a formal guide to support your strategies. Making personal appearances in niche markets, direct mail campaigns, participating in trade shows, online chats, surveys all support your strategic bottom line.
Evaluate Marketing Performance
Creating an evaluation calendar within your marketing plan helps you keep track of when to evaluate your brand awareness, when to analyze your brand, company image and positioning power, when to run customer market campaigns, your public relations calendar and your advertising impact analyses. The months may be flexible, but including them in your marketing plan, even if those related budgets have yet to be defined, gives you a baseline to run those evaluations.
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