What is a Marketing Plan & How to Write the Perfect One

One of the fundamental procedures involved in any successful business operation is creating and implementing a marketing plan.

Yes! You need a plan, but where do you start?

In this post, we’ll discuss what a marketing plan is and what you should consider when creating your marketing plan to achieve your business goals.

What is a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan is part of an overall business plan. However, a marketing plan sells a particular product or service to a target audience. A winning marketing strategy provides a number of options that must be taken when projecting a product or service to the market.

While a marketing plan contains a list of actions, it is useless to the business if it doesn’t have a healthy strategic foundation.

A marketing plan is the advertising strategy that a business implements to sell its products or service. This plan provides a guide on the target market, how to reach them, the price tag of the product or service, and how the company will measure its efforts.

Benefits of a Marketing Plan

No one starts a business without a focus or a purpose. Engaging in any form of business means there is something to achieve at the end of the day and that’s why business owners or companies sit to draw a marketing plan to achieve their goals.

Thus, developing a marketing plan will give the company and employees a direction towards achieving set goals. Business owners are able to think of their brand’s health and reputation, improve communication around their brand, and get feedback and insights while gaining relationship opportunities that will benefit the company.

What to Consider When Creating a Marketing Plan

Let’s keep in mind that the overall goal of a marketing plan is to attract customers by communicating the benefits of their business and key differentiators.

The following are some things you should consider when creating your marketing plan.

Market Research

It is important to uncover market intelligence and this can only be done through research. You do market research to reduce risks and validate the decisions you make about your band.

You also do research to get past internal struggles and to stay relevant to better serve your customers.

The research you do will help you relate with your customers/audience. Market research will also help you to learn more about your market and discover your brand’s position.

It also improves your communication as you are able to develop communication messages that resonate with your audience. This way, you are able to know what makes your audience react depending on what you share.

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Brand Positioning Statement

There are a good number of business owners or upcoming entrepreneurs who don’t understand what a brand positioning statement is. Plus, they don’t even have one.

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At the core, your brand positioning statement answers three questions:

●????What differentiates your brand from others?

●????Who is your audience and what do they think?

●????Why would someone be drawn to your brand?

Your brand positioning statement is at the core of your brand. It shows how your brand is solving a problem, provides stimulation, and offers a sense of belonging and a better self-image.

Your positioning statement should reflect what you supply to the market. It should be something your customers expect to see.

SWOT Analysis

The importance of SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis when drafting your marketing plan can’t be undermined. Part of your discovery process is for you to discover SWOT internally and externally.

Knowing your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats will help you know where you stand.

When analyzing your strengths, you should question the capability of your internal team to do the job. Do you have resources in place to execute your marketing?

What about your budget and timeline, vulnerabilities, deadlines, and other work pressure? Knowing your weaknesses puts you in a better position to strategize.

You also need to be smart to identify your opportunities. What is your edge? Do you see positive engagement? Where else can you communicate? These questions guide you to identify your opportunities.

What’s more, you need to ask questions like, what are the barriers my customers face? How strong are my competitors? What are the environmental challenges, technological advancements, and other regulations to know where threats are coming from?

Use all this information to understand your internal plan so as to create a plan that is closely targeted.

Build a Buyer Persona to Understand Your Ideal Customer

Most often, businesses or startups have solutions that don’t exist. Some usually don’t care about what the customer truly needs. In order to provide a service or solution, business owners must understand who their customers are and this can be done by developing a buyer persona .

To develop a buyer persona, you have to take into consideration the price, product, promotion, and place.

Meanwhile, to understand your audience, it is important to break your buyers into segments. Then, identify different buyer personas for each segment.

It is important to segment your audience because it helps cover subgroups of market personas. Remember that different buyers go through the journey of Awareness, Opinion, Consideration, Preference, and Purchase.

To successfully develop a buyer persona, you have to think of your ideal buyer’s job title, occupation, demographics (age, income, and gender), goals, challenges, values, hobbies, news sources, and favorite blogs. Understanding your audience helps you to develop relevant marketing content.

Create a Competitive Edge

There is no business without a competitor and this makes it very important for a business to create a competitive edge.

Businesses face different types of competitors:

●????Head to head competitor: a company sells what you sell.

●????First-tier competitor: a company competes with you but your products are not exactly the same.

●????Second-tier competitor: a company sells a product on the fringe of what you sell.

When you create your competitive edge , you can track your competitor’s interaction with the audience. With this edge, you should be able to assess your competitors by asking the following questions:

●????What are their strengths and weaknesses?

●????What are their revenues and profit margins?

●????How do they position their products?

●????What do they offer their customers and what are their goals?

It is also important to know the way competitors communicate with their customers to help you connect better with yours.

Set Goals

The goal of marketing is to connect your business value to the right customer base. Therefore, in your marketing plan, you must be clear on what you intend to achieve at the end of your marketing campaign.

Do you want an increase in website traffic? Do you want to improve sales? Or maybe you want to increase your following on Facebook.

Understanding your goal and objective can’t be ignored when drafting your marketing plan.

You already know your goal must be SMART - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

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Include the Media

While drafting your marketing plan, don’t ignore the role the media has to play in achieving your business goals. The media helps you to get your customers tuned in. To achieve this, you must include a mix of media to excite your customers.

By media mix, we are talking about having PR, Email, and social media in your marketing program. With a media mix, you are able to build credibility and trust and able to manage a crisis when it presents itself. You can tell your story with the help of blogs and news articles while generating leads and sales.

Have a Messaging Plan

What message are you sending out?

Having a well-defined purpose/message plays a vital role in the success of your marketing plan. Your message must play the following roles: inform, call to action, make decisions, generate leads, and make requests (attending or documenting a commitment).

Your message must be specific, clear, concise, and comprehensive, avoiding jargon and homonyms. It should indicate priorities and deadlines.

You must set a context in your messaging. Ask yourself if there is a need for background information.

Another thing not to ignore in your messaging plan is the medium. To select the best medium, it is important to consider the audience, the purpose, the message, and verification to ease understanding.

Meanwhile, to know your message is understood, you can use LEAPS: Listen, Empathize, Ask, Paraphrase, and Summarize.

Identify a Marketing Approach

It is important to identify a marketing approach in your marketing plan. While there exist different approaches, a phased approach is your best choice.

With the Phased Marketing Approach, you break up your marketing campaign into stages to accommodate the budget, resources, or time frames.

This helps you to get into a market by starting with a soft launch while setting realistic expectations.

Remember not to overpromise and underdeliver. Create learning opportunities, market to different market segments, and take time to set the market.

Monitor your marketing programs to know the sentiment of your communication.

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Include a Budget

Who does a marketing plan without a marketing budget? Your budget is as important as the entire plan. The truth is, you can’t execute and implement a marketing campaign without including finances. Your marketing should be detailed enough to cover hidden expenditures.

A budgeted plan helps you to determine what to spend on paid media and the need to hire external experts to achieve the desired results. Thus, your marketing won’t be complete if you have no detailed budget.

Bottomline

A solid marketing plan can take your business to new heights. It can align your marketing objectives and activities with your overall business goals, and bring your entire team together on the same page.

Now that you have the basics for designing your own marketing plan, it’s time to get started. If you need help creating a marketing plan, contact us and we will assist you the best way we can.