2. Getting Started on Your Marketing Plan
Marketing Plan
When you operate a business, you want to make sure it is a success. By knowing how to write an effective marketing plan, you will be well on your way to achieving that success.
1. What Is A Marketing Plan?
2. Getting Started On Your Marketing Plan
3. Know Your Market
4. Describe Your Services
5. Consider Your Marketing Strategies
6. Establish Clear Goals
7. Understand The Competition
8. Check Your Finances
9. Monitor Your Results
1. What Is A Marketing Plan?
A marketing plan is a written document that describes your business, explains your goals, and demonstrates how you plan to achieve them. Some businesses prepare a business plan designed to carry them through the next two to five years, but most prefer the system of writing a marketing plan for the year ahead and reviewing it at the end of each twelve-month period. This makes it possible for you to decide whether your business plan has achieved the results you expected, and if not, to adjust it.
As well as helping you define your goals and keep your business on track, a business plan is essential, if you want a loan to set up a new business or to keep an established one going. Before deciding whether to make the money available, a lending authority will expect to see your marketing plan as evidence of your business skills. By writing a market plan, you also show potential lenders that you have a clear strategy for attracting business and thus keeping your operation profitable.
If you are not sure how to write a marketing plan, working with sample marketing plans can be helpful. Software is
available to help you work out a business plan suitable for your needs. You can also find free sample marketing plans online. These are adaptable to suit your own requirements.
2. Getting Started On Your Marketing Plan
Getting your mission statement down on paper is the best way to start writing a marketing plan. This is a description of your business, the services it offers, the type of market you expect to attract, and the amount of growth you anticipate. As well as making your business plan clear to such people as potential lenders and partners, setting out a mission statement is a helpful exercise, as it requires you to be clear and concise about your business aims and objectives.
As part of your marketing plan, the mission statement does not have to be lengthy. Think of it as an explanation of your business, but try to keep it to just a few paragraphs. Within those paragraphs, be as informative as possible about your business. Make sure you include the type of clientele you want to target and the services you plan to provide.
Overall, the mission statement you prepare when writing a business plan should make clear what you want your business to do and achieve. Sample marketing plans can give helpful guidance when you are writing a marketing plan, with general mission statements that you can adapt to suit your business. As well as providing a summary of your business plan, the mission statement should convey the ethical standards of your business, as well as the type of positive image you want it to have in the community in which it operates.
3. Know Your Market
When you are writing a marketing plan, you need to include a section describing the market you intend to target. As sample marketing plans will show, this is one of the most important parts of a business plan. If you are clear about your market, and have specific ideas about how to attract it to your business, you will be well on your way to establishing a profitable enterprise.
At this stage, asking yourself some relevant questions about your market will help you understand how to write a marketing plan that comprises this necessary information. These can include such questions as the characteristics of the customers you already have, or those you want to attract, and how they differ from customers of other businesses. Your business plan should describe the needs of these customers and how you plan to meet those needs.
Sample marketing plans can help you with the target market section of your business plan by showing you how to demonstrate that your business can cater for a specific segment of a general market. You may, for example, have an educational business that targets the pre-school market. If so, when writing a business plan, you should make it clear that your market is this niche, pre-school group rather than the whole education industry. Knowing how to write a marketing plan that includes such details is important for the success of your business.
4. Describe Your Services
Describing the services your business provides is important when you are deciding how to write a marketing plan. Carrying out some preliminary market research will help you with this part of a business plan. Understanding exactly who your clients are is necessary if you are to know the services they need, so writing a marketing plan will be much easier if you have already done the research on your market and have the information at hand.
Your market research should provide you with valuable information for inclusion in your business plan, such as the special requirements of your clients and how your product or service can help them. Sample marketing plans often suggest that when writing a marketing plan you should obtain opinions from clients about your product or service for inclusion in the plan. Your business plan will be even more effective if you use it to provide information about the buying intentions of your clients. This will help you, when writing a marketing plan, to predict your future profits. By providing such forecasts, based on accurate information from your clients, you will add to the effectiveness of your business plan.
5. Consider Your Marketing Strategies
Knowing the marketing strategies you intend to use is a key point in the success of any business plan. When you are thinking about how to write a marketing plan, this section should play a major part in your considerations. Have a look at some sample marketing plans to get a general idea of promotional and marketing strategies that work for various businesses, but remember that they will not all be suitable for your particular business. The composition of your target market will make a difference in the marketing strategies you include when writing a marketing plan. You need to have a good idea of the likes, dislikes, needs, and problems of your intended clientele, so the marketing strategies of your business plan can take all these factors into account.
Your awareness of how to write a business plan that is successful will increase, if you spend some time getting to know the needs of your various clients. By joining any groups they run, attending their conferences, reading their publications, and getting to know them personally, whenever possible, you will gain a better understanding of your clients’ needs and will therefore be able to prepare a better business plan. The more knowledge you have of your clients, the greater chance your business plan will have of succeeding.
6. Establish Clear Goals
Writing a business plan involves setting goals that you want your business to achieve. By learning how to set reachable goals, therefore, you will know how to write a marketing plan with realistic and achievable aims. When writing a marketing plan, look at the areas of your business that you want to develop. Study sample marketing plans for general ideas about goal setting that could help you, and think about how to achieve your goals. If, for example, you feel it is important to increase sales, write this aim into your business plan with practical ideas about how to bring about the increase. If you want to increase your staff, put this down in your business plan as a goal and describe the strategy you will use to bring about the increase.
As well as dealing with specific goals, your business plan should also show the overall marketing goals you want to attain. The plan to engage in ongoing marketing itself should have a major part in your marketing plan. This means becoming well known to clients through promoting yourself by various means included in your business plan, such as advertising, sending out regular newsletters, attending conferences, and maintaining an up-to-date and user-friendly website.
7. Understand The Competition
If you are in business, you will almost certainly have competition. Understanding and identifying that competition will help you produce a successful marketing plan. A successful business plan, in turn, will make your business more profitable.
Your competition may be direct, such as a shop in the neighborhood selling the same type of product or service that you offer, or it may be indirect, such as businesses advertising similar products on the Internet. By knowing how to write a business plan that takes into account any type of competition you can expect to encounter, you will have more chance of succeeding. As part of writing a marketing plan, you need to study various aspects of your competitors, such as the prices they offer and the quality of their goods and service. If you are not accustomed to writing a marketing plan, you can use sample marketing plans to set out ways in which you can cope with this competition and establish a unique position for yourself in the market.
When studying your competition as part of deciding how to write a marketing plan, take a positive view of the situation. Make sure your business plan sets out your strengths and shows how your business remains special. The effectiveness of a marketing plan depends, to a large extent, on establishing a unique position in the market for your business.
8. Check Your Finances
Finance is a key factor in knowing how to write a marketing plan. The financial section of your business plan should show whether or not your business concept is viable. When you are writing a business plan with the aim of obtaining backing from a lending authority, keep in mind that this is the section that will probably attract the most careful scrutiny.
If you are uncertain about how to organize the financial section of your marketing plan, check the sample marketing plans available on the Internet. You will find that the financial part of a business plan includes three main sections. These are a statement of income, the projected cash flow, and the balance sheet of the business. Make sure that your business plan also includes an explanation of each of these three areas. Keep the analyses short, but try to ensure that they cover the main points
The financial section of your marketing plan is probably the most time consuming. It involves getting together financial information, including both the start-up expenses and the ongoing operating expenses of your business. While it may involve some time, it is a worthwhile exercise, helping you produce a marketing plan that can show the viability of your business.
9. Monitor Your Results
Once you know how to write a marketing plan, you also need to know how to monitor the results arising from the plan. This will help you understand whether the marketing strategies included in your business plan are working to help you. A business plan can make all the difference to the success of your enterprise, so it makes sense to follow up on its effectiveness in the market place.
The strategies included in your business plan should be followed up and checked to see whether they led to increase demands for your product. You can do this by various means such as surveying customers by phone and providing them with feedback forms. This will give you valuable information that can be put to use in your next business plan.
You may find, after writing a marketing plan, that some of the strategies you included have not worked for you. If so, don’t despair. Writing a marketing plan is an evolving process that can change from year to year as your business grows and expands. When a strategy has not worked, regard it as a learning process in the art of how to write a marketing plan and resolve to make any necessary changes to your business plan.