What is a marketing plan?

Marketing is all about matching the features and benefits that your products and services can provide with specific customers and then telling those customers why they should buy from you. Your marketing plan details how to do this. A marketing plan is a document that complements your business plan and brings together all of your market research so that you can determine exactly where your business is going and how you will get there.

Your plan should include:

• Goals.
• Current market details.
• A complete analysis of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. (SWOT analysis.)
• Your plans to achieve your goals.

The plan must be flexible and adapt to changing market conditions.

Benefits of a marketing plan

Having a marketing plan will help you focus on your target market and find if there are gaps in the market that provide new opportunities. Your marketing plan will also provide you with something to measure your progress. This can highlight the strategies that work for you and those that don’t.

A good marketing plan will benefit you too, as it gives your external financiers the confidence that you know your market and know how to achieve your goals.

A good marketing plan will take care of finding new potential customers and creating new networking opportunities for your business. The bottom line means that your plan will define your business, as well as your customers and their future plans.

What is a good marketing plan?

A good marketing plan is really a blueprint for the action your business must take to achieve certain goals. It will identify the most profitable ways to perform certain functions and should show you the best way to present your business to your target audience.

A good marketing plan will save you money by eliminating unnecessary expenses while also introducing you to new marketing opportunities. A good plan will work for your business to ensure that what you do fits within your budget and that your marketing push reaches your target audience.

Basically, you will keep all your activities and budgets on track. If you don’t have a good marketing plan, you may not be taking full advantage of all the ways to reach your target audience. This will result in a decrease in sales.

A marketing plan must reach people

Your marketing plan will provide you with a clue on where your business should run. It is similar to a flight plan for pilots. Your flight plan tells you the direction your plane is going to fly, where you are departing from, and the path to take to reach your destination.

A sports coach will have a game plan that sets out how the team will play on that particular day. The coach will work on strategies that will effectively frustrate and beat the competition so they can rise to the top.

Your marketing plan should be designed in a similar way.

• It has to be built with an end result in mind.
• It must be tailored to the specific markets you are targeting, as well as the people in those markets.
• It has to be flexible to meet the needs of the people in the markets because those needs are constantly changing.
• It should focus on the people and not the products.

Always remember to develop a marketing plan specifically designed to reach people.