While your business plan generally outlines your entire business, a standalone marketing plan focuses specifically, and in more detail, on just that one function. When business owners want to dive deeper into their marketing strategy they will likely put together a detailed plan that outlines their marketing goals -- as well as the steps needed to accomplish them.
The standard components of an effective marketing plan can vary depending on who you ask. Here is my recommended five-step process for developing a marketing plan that will help you achieve your goals for business growth.
Step One: Look inward.
Think of your company as if it were a person with its own unique personality and identity. With that in mind, create separate lists that identify your business's strengths, weaknesses and goals. Put everything down and create big lists. Don't edit or reject anything.
Then, find priorities among the bullet points. If you've done this right, you'll have more than you can use, and some more important than others. Kick some of the less important bullets off the list and move the ones that are important to the top.
This sometimes requires input from your managers as well. For example, your management team thinks being conservative on spending is a weakness but you don't. That might be something to drop off the list.
Related: Guy Kawasaki on Writing an Effective Mission Statement
Step Two: Look outward.
The next list you'll need to make outlines your business's opportunities and threats. Think of both as external to your business -- factors that you can't control but can try to predict. Opportunities can include new markets, new products and trends that favor your business. Threats include competition and advances in technology that put you at a disadvantage.
Also make a list of invented people or organizations who serve as ideal buyers or your ideal target market. You can consider each one a persona, such as a grandmother discovering email or a college student getting his or her first credit card. These people are iconic and ideal, and stand for the best possible buyer.
Put yourself in the place of each of these ideal buyers and then think about what media he or she uses and what message would communicate your offering most effectively. Keep your identity in the back of your mind as you flesh out your target markets.
Step Three: Focus on strategy.
Now it's time to pull your lists together. Look for the intersection of your unique identity and your target market. In terms of your business offerings, what could you drop off the list because it's not strategic? Then think about dropping those who aren't in your target market.
For example, a restaurant business focused on healthy, organic and fine dining would probably cater to people more in tune with green trends and with higher-than-average disposable income. So, it might rule out people who prefer eating fast-food like hamburgers and pizza, and who look for bargains.
The result of step three is strategy: Narrow your focus to what's most in alignment with your identity and most attractive to your target market. In other words, focus on the area that is shared by all three lines in the diagram here.
Related: Creating a Unique Selling Proposition
Step Four: Set measurable steps.
Get down to the details that are concrete and measurable. Your marketing strategy should become a plan that includes monthly review, tracking and measurement, sales forecasts, expense budgets and non-monetary metrics for tracking progress. These can include leads, presentations, phone calls, links, blog posts, page views, conversion rates, proposals and trips, among others.
Match important tasks to people on your team and hold them accountable for their successes and failures.
Step Five: Review often and revise.
Just as with your business plan, your marketing plan should continue to evolve along with your business. Your assumptions will change, so adapt to the changing business landscape. Some parts of the plan also will work better than others, so review and revise to accommodate what you learn as you go.
Related: Five Signs You Need a Marketing Makeover
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Comments:
Working with social media when it comes to marketing is a great idea, pretty much all online marketers nowadays will use social media in one way or another. If you get the correct keywords and write a brilliant eye catching content then you can get great converting highly targetted visitors to your sites / company. Thanks for sharing your Marketing Plan. :)
Very basic necessities but most often over looked. Thank you for the sound advice in a few steps.
A very good (rare) if basic group of steps, but perfect for beginners. I see these types of articles and they usually include very poor and incomplete advice.
This is a most excellent presentation. It happened to coincide exactly what I have been preaching to my friends in the business. I highly rfecommend that this be forwarded to the President of our country, and let him know and undertand how jobs will be created, and that the private industry should be allowed to do so, WITHOUT excessive regulation and taxes that only stifel such initiatives. And tell him that he should limit his job creation plan (which is a wrong choice od words, since MARKETS ARE CREATED, and jobs will follow automatically) to a few needed bureaucratic positions, if at all. Thank you Tim Berry! Hentr Suyderhoud Censcomp Consulting
To your five points, I would add creating a manifesto, or in our case, a Womanifesto. We design brand experiences for the world’s most influential consumer: the female shopper. Our priorities and strategies are shaped by one guiding principle: Craft brand experiences as a pleasure, a ritual or a place of escape. www.pixinkdesign.com
i dont like it cause its not clear enough for to understand and am a student who is determined to have samples for me to have a clear understanding so can you try another way am totally blank on that.
I love that you mentioned about focus - which is often forgotten when one is creating a marketing plan, as the need to be 'everywhere' for 'everyone' is just overpowering. I think that what you wrote here makes perfect sense, Tim. And yes, one must be open to change as the way you do business online is constantly evolving.
Solid advice, and a nice review of the fundamentals.
A great primer -- but in my experience it is Step 3 that trips people up. The word strategy can be paralyzing. To get things moving again, focus on 7 words -- who, what, why, when, where, how, plus "and." Read more in my blog "The Marketing “S” Word — and seven other words to live by" http://bit.ly/eeu1CV --pam alvord Kilgannon @kilgie:disqus
Great tips.
Thanks for all your great marketing plan and marketing calendar tips. Keep em coming, great stuff. Thanks for sharing your five-step process for developing a marketing plan that will help you achieve your goals. And you are so right on that your marketing plan should continue to evolve along with your business. In fact, if it’s OK with you I’d like to add that no marketing plan or marketing calendar should be set in stone! If history has taught us anything, no matter how effective your plan may be, chances are, it will have to be altered at a given time; due to what your competitor(s), clients, future clients or suppliers are doing. Here’s the kicker, don’t feel as if you have to be a psychic. Don’t feel overwhelmed at the thought of needing a business and marketing plan so flexible that it takes away from the overall aim and goals that made you ‘hungry’ to market your particular business, product, service or idea in the first place! No doubt about it, there’s an easy way to be sure that you can continue to have success in the future – if you just start off with flexibility in mind! The best way to do so is to have a marketing plan and marketing calendar that is flexible and built to adjust itself when the time comes to do so. To your success, Sandy Barris Fast Marketing Plan.com http://www.FastMarketingPlan.com
As much as the line between strategy planning and marketing plans gets a bit blurred, its important to remember core marketing themes as part of marketing planning. For these 5 steps, don't forget to consider segmentation, customer motivations and core acquisition/retention channels ...