Content

• Steps
• Part 1 of 4: Conducting a Situation Analysis
• Part 2 of 4: Overview of your company's strengths and weaknesses
• Part 3 of 4: Finding Marketing Plan Ideas
• Part 4 of 4: Preparing a Marketing Plan
• Tips
• Warnings
• Additional articles

A company's marketing plan is a plan that reflects its overall marketing strategy for the coming year. It must indicate for whom you are positioning your products, how you will sell it to the target category of buyers, what techniques you will use to attract new customers and increase sales. The purpose of a marketing plan is to detail how you can market your products and services to your target market.

Steps

Part 1 of 4: Conducting a Situation Analysis

1. 1 Think over the goals of your company. The purpose of a situational analysis is to understand the current marketing situation in which your company is located. Based on this understanding, you can think through and implement the necessary changes in your business. Start by looking at the company's mission and goals (if your company does not already have them, then they need to be defined first) and check if your current marketing plan is helping you achieve those goals.
   • For example, your company performs snow removal and other related winter types of work. You have set yourself the goal of increasing your revenue by 10% through new contracts. Do you have a marketing plan that outlines how you can attract additional contracts? If a plan exists, is it effective?
2. 2 Explore your current marketing advantages and disadvantages. How is your company currently attractive to customers? How are competing companies attractive to customers? It is very likely that your strengths are what attracts customers to you. Knowing your strengths gives you an important marketing advantage.
   • Highlight clear, undeniable advantages and strengths of your company that your customers love. They refer to the intrinsic characteristics of a company and determine the level of satisfaction of its customers.
   • Potential benefits include low cost, excellent customer service, customer friendliness, or speed of service.
   • Understand what sets you apart from the competition. The differences can be related to your strengths or the way you run your business. But if you want customers to prefer you, and not competitors, then you need to understand in advance, why they have to do that.
   • Also, you should be aware of the potential weaknesses and weaknesses of your company, since these are also its internal characteristics that are significant for customers. Once you've identified your weaknesses, you should start to work towards correcting them. If you don't, your weaknesses can give your competitors a noticeable advantage over you.
3. 3 Research your target market. It is very important to know exactly who your products are intended for in order to direct your marketing strategy to the target audience. Knowing the target market and its needs will help you understand where and how to advertise your product. If you do not have a clear idea of ​​the target market, you will not be able to build an effective system for adapting goods and services to the needs of customers.
   • Conduct a demographic survey. It will be helpful to know the age, gender, location, and even the average income of your clients. You will also need to understand the psychology of customer selection. For example, if your company is snow-clearing and its clients are large companies, what is the most important part of the snow-cleaning service for them?
   • Use official statistics for your market and industry. You can get acquainted with such economic indicators as price and cost indices, as well as employment statistics by country, region and city.
   • If the budget of your company allows, then you can order from specialized institutions individual research and market analysis, as well as analysis of current trends in your industry.
   • Also, you need to research your competitors. The only way to offer customers what your competitors can't offer is to find out exactly why your competitors are attractive. Do they offer better prices? Do they have higher turnover rates? If so, how do they do it? Are they sometimes trying to cut corners and take the simplest route when preparing their business plan? By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, you can pave the best path to success for your company.
   SPECIALIST'S ADVICE

   

   Emily Hickey, MS

   
   
   Chief Detective founder Emily Hickey is the founder of Chief Detective, a social media promotion agency that helps some of the world's largest retailers and startups advertise themselves on Facebook and Instagram. Has been working as a development specialist for over 20 years. She received her master's degree from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2006.

   Emily Hickey, MS
   Founder of Chief Detective

   Try to imagine individual clients. Emily Hickey, founder of a social media promotion agency, says: “Try to think about specific people who might be customers of a particular brand or users of a particular product. You can use social media to get an idea of ​​who these people are, as well as view competitors' sites and customer reviews. When you manage to introduce a few specific people, that will be your target market. "

   
   
4. 4 Gather information about external opportunities and threats for your company. They will be external characteristics of the company, depending on competition, fluctuations in market factors, as well as customers and buyers. The goal is to identify the various factors that can affect the business. This will then allow you to adjust your marketing plan accordingly.
   • Start by analyzing market trends, such as changing customer wants and needs, and how they expect from companies like yours.
   • Pay attention to trends in the financial sector, for example, the growth in the use of virtual means of payment or current inflation rates.
   • If you own a snow removal business and position your services for government agencies, then you should keep in mind that the limited budgetary resources of such organizations make them more picky about the price. In such a situation, the business development strategy and its marketing plan should focus on how to provide the best combination of minimum price and good quality of your services.

Part 2 of 4: Overview of your company's strengths and weaknesses

1. 1 Mail the survey to your clients. If you have an impressive loyal customer base, consider conducting a survey among them. This way you can learn from your customers the strengths and weaknesses of your company. As a result, your marketing plan will build on the strengths of your business (because you know what your customers like). In addition, you will be able to make efforts to correct those points of activity that are the weaknesses of the company.
   • The questionnaires sent out should be short and simple. Clients may be interested in taking a survey, but they won't want to spend a lot of time and effort on it. Try to make your survey take about half of an A4 page. If you need a more impressive survey, then in no case should it exceed two pages (this is the absolute limit).
   • Try to make sure that the questionnaire questions suggest the client's short independent answers, and do not require choosing an option from the proposed list of answers. Of course, if you want, you can include several multiple choice questions in the questionnaire, but the bulk of the questions should remain open, as listed below. What do you like about our product / service? What do you like least of all? What improvements would you like to see? You can also ask customers if they are willing to recommend your company to anyone and why. So while collecting information about the strengths and weaknesses of the company, you can assess the level of customer satisfaction.
   • Include a paid envelope with your address in the letter with the questionnaire. You shouldn't force clients into unnecessary efforts and costs. Taking the survey should be as simple as possible for them.
   • If you decide to conduct a survey by mail, be sure to budget for the cost of printing the survey and postage.
2. 2 Conduct a survey by email. This type of survey is appropriate if you have information about the email addresses of your customers that you collected as part of the contact information for the monthly distribution on behalf of your company. In an email survey, you can ask the same questions that you would include in a printed survey. However, when conducting surveys by email, there is a risk that your emails will end up in your spam folder. You will never know how much of the emails you sent out were actually received, and there is no guarantee that the customers who receive the email will want to take the survey.
3. 3 Organize a telephone survey. In some cases, telephone surveys are a sensitive topic, since many people are annoyed when unknown persons call them with unknown purposes. However, if your business is based on close personal communication with customers, then there is nothing to worry about in a telephone survey. You can ask most of the same questions that you would include in a written survey: about the strengths and weaknesses of the company, about the likelihood of recommending your company to other people.
   • The disadvantage of telephone surveys (in addition to the possible irritation of the client from your call) is the lack of a written response from the client, which you receive when filling out printed or electronic questionnaires. Therefore, to conduct telephone interviews, you may need someone with high speed typing or writing skills who will then compile a pivot table or catalog of your customers' testimonials.
4. 4 Conduct individual customer surveys. They don't have to be extensive. You can simply ask a couple of related questions when you call a client about a case while processing his order or providing him with any assistance.However, the best way to conduct a survey is through face-to-face communication with the client so you can know exactly what improvements your business is lacking.
   • Similar to a telephone survey, with a face-to-face survey, you will also need to record customer responses and feedback. This does not make face-to-face interview ineffective or impracticable. You just need to think over all the nuances in advance if you decide to go this way.

Part 3 of 4: Finding Marketing Plan Ideas

1. 1 Gather all the information at your disposal. Review the results of all the research you've done and decide how you will expand your business. Match your ideas to current realities and obstacles, including considering current and projected market trends, expected costs in the near future, regions and demographics that are most successful for you, and competitors operating in the same regions or working with the same demographic groups.
2. 2 Designate responsible persons. When preparing your marketing plan, you will need to designate individuals responsible for specific aspects of promoting your company in the marketplace. Consider which employees will best be able to fulfill specific marketing policy functions and define their responsibilities. You will also need to consider a system for assessing the success of these job responsibilities.
3. 3 Announce your marketing goals. What do you want to achieve with your marketing plan? Do you see the ultimate goal of expanding your customer base, informing existing customers of new services and quality improvements, expanding into other regions or demographic groups, or something else entirely? It is your goals that will form the basis for preparing the plan.
   • Marketing goals should not conflict with the main goals of your business.
   • When setting your marketing goals, you need to remember that they must be tangible and measurable. Otherwise, it will be difficult to interpret the results of their implementation, and you will not be able to understand which strategies and approaches have been effective.
   • Use indicators such as revenue growth, increased sales / production in volume terms, increased public awareness of your company, and an increase in the number of new customers as a guide.
   • For example, the goal might be to increase the number of contracts awarded by 10% or to increase the dissemination of information about your company on social media.
4. 4 Identify ways to achieve your goals. The strategic action plan should address all three categories of customers: the cold category (those who do not know about you at all, who need to be reached through advertising and direct product promotion), the warm category (those who already know your business, or at least least seen their advertisements or participated in marketing campaigns) and the hot category (interested customers who know your company well and are willing to continue working with it). You will need to come up with ideas for how to reach all categories of existing and potential customers, which will determine the applied marketing strategy.
   • For example, social media, radio advertisements, billboards, or flyers can be used to reach out to cold leads. Trained people can work with potential clients who have already shown an interest in you or even dealt with you in order to convince them, based on the information obtained during market research, that your company's products or services will serve as the best solution to their problems.
5. 5 Develop marketing strategies to achieve your goals. Once you have clearly defined your marketing goals and prospects, you need to think about specific actions to achieve them. There are many different types of marketing strategies, but the most common ones are listed below.
   • Corporate events or special events organized directly in stores are a great way to attract customers. The event can be organized as a banquet, social activity, or something else that will make a good impression on customers, motivate and rally your staff, or expand your circle of potential customers.
   • Social promotion methods are almost always successful. This is because they promote your business while at the same time inspiring admiration in people for your products and services. For example, you can organize some kind of competition right in the store or on social networks with a small reward for showing attention to your company or for subscribing to your group on social networks.
   • Consider paying for short-term open support for your company from a respected person or group of people who already use its products and services. This type of support can be provided entirely through social media. This type of action will not withstand every budget, since the costs for it can be quite high. However, in many cases, this step is very effective.
   • Don't neglect the value of smart, engaging ads. High-quality selection of the face and voice of your advertising campaign will give extremely effective results.
6. 6 Think about the role that social media can play for you. Various social media platforms can be extremely effective and inexpensive ways to advertise your business, so they should be included as a separate component of your marketing plan. Social media can be useful for advertising special offers, discounts, promoting products, and communicating with your target audience.
   • Being active on social media will allow you to better understand what your customers are holding in their minds. Consider starting a blog or distributing links to information about potential customer problems and how your company can address them.
   • Open topics, online support, and surveys can be great ways to grab the attention of customers while learning their preferences and cementing your brand on their list of final picks.
7. 7 Approve the budget. You may have great ideas for promoting your business and expanding your customer base, but with a limited budget, you may need to partially rethink your strategy. The budget must be realistic and reflect both the current state of the business and its potential future growth.
   • Assess the finances at your disposal. The realism of the budget is that it should reflect the amount of money that you can afford to spend. Don't inflate your budget in the hope that your marketing plan will generate substantial cash flows in the future. Indeed, in the event of its failure, it may turn out that you will waste money in vain.
   • Start small, allocate your marketing budget, and act on that basis. Turn to the time-tested advertising methods that you know are most effective in attracting new customers.
   • Don't be afraid to deviate from the plan. If a certain type of ad doesn't go as well as you'd like (for example, newspaper ads won't reach your target audience), try reallocating your time and money towards a different, more effective ad type.

Part 4 of 4: Preparing a Marketing Plan

1. 1 Start with an explanatory note. This section of the marketing plan should include basic information about your product or service, and also briefly describe the overall content of the entire document in one or two paragraphs of text. The priority preparation of an explanatory note will allow you to subsequently expand and describe in more detail certain points in the main text of the document.
   • Be aware that the prepared marketing plan is extremely useful to give for review both to the direct employees of your company and to its consultants.
2. 2 Describe your target market. The second section of your marketing plan will refer to the results of your research and describe the company's target market. The text should not be written in complex language, indicating simple key points will be enough. You can start by describing the demographics of your market (including age, gender, location, and customer profile, if applicable), and then move on to identifying the main customer preferences for your products or services.
3. 3 List your goals. This section should not span more than one page of text. It should indicate the company's marketing goals for the coming year. Remember that the goals you set must satisfy five qualities: be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.
   • For example, a reasonable target might be: “Increase total revenue from public sector companies by 10% by the end of 2017”.
4. 4 Describe your marketing strategy. This section should contain information on how to implement the marketing plan, that is, a description of the overall marketing strategy. The point here is to focus on your company's Unique Selling Proposition (USP), which is the main competitive advantage of your business. It will be easier for you to prepare the text portion of this section after putting forward and planning the main strategic ideas. Remember, a strategy should help you sell your USP.
   • The section should include information on how to contact customers (through trade shows, radio advertisements, phone calls, online advertising) and disclose the general approach to encouraging people to make a purchase. All this needs to be built around the needs of the client and how your USP can satisfy them.
   • In this section, the highest possible specifics are of the highest importance.
5. 5 Enter your budget. This section of the marketing plan should indicate the total amount of funds that should be spent on promoting products, as well as the specific purpose of spending this amount. It is reasonable to divide all forthcoming expenses into categories and provide subtotals of expenses for each direction of spending.
   • For example, 500 thousand rubles should be spent on participating in trade shows, 500 thousand on radio advertising, 20 thousand on flyers, 100 thousand on new ways of promoting, 200 thousand on optimizing the company's website.
6. 6 Update your marketing plan annually (at least). Don't assume that your marketing plan will continue unchanged. In most cases, marketers recommend revising marketing plans at least once a year. This allows you to understand what goals have already been achieved, what (based on current data) will continue to drive further growth and what elements of the marketing plan need to be changed.
   • Be objective when reviewing your marketing plan annually. If something is not working or someone in charge is not acting in the best interests of the company, you can openly discuss problems and non-compliance with the staff with the staff. If things are going really badly, you may have to prepare a completely different marketing plan.It is in this situation that it is useful to hire a third-party consultant to assess the advantages and disadvantages of the old marketing plan and restructure it in the right direction.

Tips

• Be sure to include in your marketing plan the needs and ideas for each department of your company (and even the employee, if applicable). It is also very important that the marketing plan is linked and well integrated with the business plan and mission of the company, its public image and core values.
• Include in your marketing plan any tables, graphs, and the like that you need to draw up in the process of gathering important information. In addition, it will be helpful to include tables in the plan that explain the key points of the plan.

Warnings

• It is necessary to revise the marketing plan at least once a year to check the success of the strategies used and to redo those parts of the plan that were unsuccessful.
• Many of the critical factors in a marketing plan are dynamic. If they change over time, the marketing plan needs to be revised.

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