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How to create a marketing plan for your business

How to create a marketing plan for your business

 

Every business should have a marketing plan even if this is just one page outlining your strategy, objectives, who you are selling to and what you are going to promote to them.

So which strategy will you follow:

Market penetration – go after more of what you have
Market Development – take your products for new markets
Product Development – create new products for existing markets
Or
Diversification – create new products and take them to new markets

From this you’ll be able to create your marketing objectives which will also come from what your business is looking to achieve this year.

The CIM define marketing as

“Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.”

So lets make this happen for you.

Define your target market or ideal customer or niche and create products and services that solve their problems profitably for your business.

Select how you’ll get in front of them by considering the 7Ps of marketing in your plan

Product
Price
Place
Promotion
People
Process
Physical Evidence

More details on these are available from the CIM

https://www.cim.co.uk/media/4772/7ps.pdf

Now you’re ready to create campaigns to go out on the right channels for you.

At this stage consider what launches you’ll be doing throughout the year, when will you be doing sales promotions and what key dates or industry events do you need to be involved in.

Remember social media is a marketing channel and not a strategy and these tactics is how you bring your marketing campaigns to life through. Examples include:

  • Website, PPC, SEO so that you area easily found on search engines
  • Email marketing and funnels to keep in touch with current customers and prospects
  • Social media content to keep brand loyalty and conversations going with customers and also ask for the sale in your posts
  • PR is a great way to build your authority in your industry and promote stories about you and your business
  • Events – trade shows, festivals, speaking, networking to be in front of your customers and ideal clients more often
  • Content marketing – blogs, video, podcasts
  • Offline channels – leaflets, newspaper, radio, signage, packaging
  • And finally
  • Measure. Create a list of KPIs that you’ll monitor to work out the successes in your plan and allow you to review what’s working so you can do more of it and what’s not so you can use time and budget elsewhere.

Lastly have fun with marketing and bring in support as you need it to project manage and deliver on campaigns.

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