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How to Create a Marketing Plan

You wouldn't try to drive you car without gas in the tank, so why would you try to drive your business without a marketing plan? I wish I had a real statistic to back it up, but I am pretty sure that less than 10% of businesses actually have a real marketing plan. And while many companies suppose that unless they advertise heavily, they don't really need a marketing plan, this is just not the case. A marketing plan helps a company to target where they are going – that is, where their revenue for the coming year is going to come from….and how are they going to get it in the door. Regardless whether you are using advertising or a sales team, or even if that sales team is just you….you need to aim for some plan of achieving revenue if you're going to have a viable business.

So I thought I would give you the basics for building a marketing plan for your company…follow these basic steps and you'll at least have a marketing plan you can move forward with, and continue to improve in coming years.

• First, start with some analysis…of your company versus competitors. See what you have going for you that others don't. If you're lacking in competitive advantages, then get some help in brainstorming what you need to outshine the competition. Determine how you want to be known – for example the high-quality supplier, a niche specialist, or a low-cost supplier, and what future vision you have as a company versus your competitors.
• Second, reexamine your service packages and product lines and how they are priced, to make it speak consistently with the vision you have laid out. If you want to be the high-quality supplier, then you must make sure you price higher than the competition. If you want to be the low cost volume supplier, then you'll need to price lower.
• Third, figure out which target markets are best suited to your competitive positioning. Whether they are consumer targets, or business targets, you'll need a pretty clear idea of who they are and whether they really will care about what you have to offer. Then set a target for how many of these additional clients you want.
• Finally, once you know your targets, you need to figure out how to reach them…through advertising, sales representation, public relations, the web, or even through distributors. Make a budget for all of the contact methods you will use, based on how much more business you can handle. Then take these activities, and estimate conservative closing ratios of sales, and you'll be able to derive that precious revenue forecast that actually means something.

So in summary – get on this marketing thing, and make yourself a plan. Don't find yourself a year down the road wondering what happened to your business – take the wheel, drive the business, build a marketing plan, and stick with it. Just doing that much will probably put you ahead of 90% of your competitors, since they of course, don't even have marketing plans.