Benjamin Franklin once said: “If you fail to prepare, you prepare for failure.” This quote refers to many aspects of life and business. It is especially relevant to the world of marketing. Whatever you want to achieve in life, you must have a plan that prescribes the sequence of steps that lead to its fulfillment. It’s the same in business. If you want to have a certain benchmark when doing business, you will need to write a detailed marketing plan. You must have defined goals and a clear process that precedes their fulfillment.
A marketing plan is part of a business plan
One of the segments that your business plan will include is the marketing strategy. It is the plan for advertising and promotion of the products or services you offer. A prerequisite for any successful purchase is that customers first of all know about the product. If you do not invest in marketing, the chances of that happening are small.
For this reason, as with any other business, you need a plan. You need to know what the first steps are, what the goals are and how to reach them. These aspects are foreseen by the marketing plan. It requires consistency, and adaptability too.
Parts of a marketing plan
Although there is no precise formula, the segments from almost every marketing plan are: collection of data from market research; description of target market and niche; description of product or service; competition analysis and unique sales position; mission statement; marketing strategy description; price and brand positioning; budget and marketing goals; various evaluations of progress and analysis as well; (such as customer satisfaction, number of site visits, etc.).
Inspiration for a successful marketing plan
Before we dedicate ourselves to strategies for creating a marketing plan in a small budget, we will simulate ideal conditions. Here are some tips to help you write and implement a marketing plan. They are without limiting factors like budget and other resources.
Let the vision inspire you
Always keep in mind why you decided on a particular job. What motivated you at the very beginning? How did you imagine your future after working on a certain project? You must have been thinking about long-term goals and ways to achieve them.
Vision is an important part of any business, even marketing plan. If you encounter a crisis and you are not sure how to deal with it, you should always return to your original vision. What inspired you? Remember the beginning and let your enthusiasm awaken again. You used to have a vision, now you just have to wake it up. The vision will provide answers to many questions that you will touch on in the marketing plan.
Do a SWOT analysis and define your position in relation to the competition
Identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to your product or service. Include the knowledge and conclusions that emerged from the SWOT analysis in the creation of the famous “four P” marketing plan. These are product (product), price (price), promotion (promotion), place (distribution).
If you already have a product, do a market analysis. Determine what prices your competition has set. By comparing your product with a competitor, you will understand what your price position is.
By defining the price, the type of promotion is reached. It depends on the type of product. Ask yourself what kind of store matches the product you offer. There is the decision on the type of media. Are social networks a good channel for promotion? Do you need promoters or additional materials? How does such a product reach the consumer?
The answers to these questions are an integral part of any marketing plan.
Dedicate yourself to your niche
In connection with the previous, one of the first steps in defining a promotion plan is to concretize the target group and niche. When defining these two elements, you need to dedicate yourself to communicating with your target audience.
A good marketing plan, not only envisages channels of communication, but the amount of information too. If you flood your target group with information about your brand, product or service on a daily basis, you risk losing it. A good marketing plan channels you in the urge to over-share information. He serves as a strict controller who prescribes when, how and how much.
Instead of randomly sharing content, a good marketing plan will advise you to get to know and profile your customers better. Take an interest in the needs of your target group. Find out what they do, what challenges they face and what it is that touches them on a daily basis.
Become an expert for your target group, not just your industry, and help them solve the problems they are struggling with. This way, you will preserve their trust and make them always come back to you.
Follow the competition and improve your marketing plan
Since you must stay true to your marketing plan, you must not neglect your competition at any time. Always follow what it does and how it attracts its consumers. If you discover their recipe, you can adjust your strategy. Although it requires consistency, the marketing plan should be alive and evolving as trends change. Google ads are a very important part of any serious promotional campaign.
These were the basic rules applicable to any marketing plan. We will dedicate ourselves to creating a marketing plan in the real circumstances of modern business.
Marketing plan with a small budget
Today, many companies operate with very limited marketing budgets. They are often forced to cut them further. This forces marketing professionals to choose their tactics wisely.
Why is a marketing plan relevant in a limited budget? Marketing professionals are required to prove return on investment (ROI). They primarily need the established plan to measure and present the results. This is especially important if you have small advertising budget. This means that every invested dollar must be justified.
What does a good plan have to contain?
A successful marketing plan will address your biggest business and marketing challenges. It will guide your team to the most important goals. Also it will help you form a budget.
How to make it? We prepared 6 tips from experts from Skoda Minotti. They will help you build a successful marketing plan.
1. Define your challenge
Instead of starting from the beginning, in this phase it starts from the end. Like the technique of writing stories. Start with the ultimate goal you have in mind.
The questions you should ask yourself are: What problems do I want to solve? Which challenges must be met? What opportunities should be used? What dangers should be faced?
If you are not able to answer all the questions, don’t worry. The answers will crystallize through the process. It is important that, while looking for answers to questions, you work in parallel on your marketing plan.
The first danger is that the inability to seek answers blocks the further development of the marketing plan. The second is that at this stage you are too attached to tactics, because it does not have to coincide with reality.
A key challenge for your company at this stage could be a lack of potential customers on the company’s site. The site is outdated and you are losing traffic because of the incompatibilities with Google’s new algorithms.
No matter what problems you have, it is important to identify and solve them.
2. Define your SMART goals
SMART goals include specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound goals. To lead your team in the right way and create a sustainable marketing plan, it is important that you adhere to them.
How to define SMART goals in the most productive way? These goals should be related to your challenges, opportunities and threats that you identified in the previous step. The result achieved by meeting each of the SMART objectives should be clearly stated.
An example of SMART goals would be:
“Provide 10 potential customers every month through digital marketing” or “build a relevant website in the next 4 months”.
Setting SMART goals allows you to present workable evidence for your superiors and company executives. Also for marketing spending to bring a return on investment (ROI).
3. Set your strategy
Your strategy should support your chosen marketing tactics and costs. The previous sections dealt with their profiling. In this section you will define how you plan to solve challenges and meet your goals.
How to come up with an effective strategy? One way is to take a critical distance. Try to think like your target audience. Ask yourself what path you should take to convey your message to that target group. As usual, how you will solve their problem.
Your strategy should stimulate creativity, encourage messaging, make channel choices, and define other key variables.
As you can see from the attached, every step of a good marketing plan makes you go back to the beginning of the story and explore. Before you start making any plan, you need to know your target audience. Also, their problems and interests and how you can solve them.
Finally, go back to the experience so far. Take a look at previous campaigns to determine what worked and what didn’t.
4. Explain your tactics
In this section, you will further elaborate on the details of your plan. Your tactics are the steps and tasks you need to perform to achieve your intentions and goals by the strategy.
For example, delegation is a tactic. Consider the division of responsibilities: name team members to manage and assign them specific tasks. Some will develop a blog. Others will launch a new AdWords campaign with a precise monthly budget. Others will create content for a new site, and so on. Proper assignment of responsibilities is an indispensable characteristic of a good leader.
5. Establish time frames
Always set both short-term and long-term frameworks. Short-term goals are good for maintaining motivation. It is still necessary to focus on the bigger picture. That’s what long-term plans are for. Be sure to set deadlines for activities such as meetings and distribution times. Ask your team for real-time feedback on specific tasks.
You should take reciprocity into account here. What you are looking for and anticipating in your marketing plan? You should respect yourself, especially at the level of timely sharing of information. So give yourself deadlines and build a habit of keeping the rest of the team informed of all the progress. Make them understand what their contribution is.
6. Assess your resources
The resources that the marketing plan takes into account are people, technology and marketing budget. Relevant issues in this section include:
- Human Resources – Do you have enough people with the right set of skills? Do you need to look for external collaborators to fulfill certain parts of your plan? Do you need the services of an external PR agency, a graphic designer or something else?
- Technology – Is your technology up to date? What technology needs for your marketing tactics to be successful? Are the goals workable within your budget?
- Marketing Budget – Does your marketing plan fit into a predetermined budget? Is the budget formed based on tactics?
These were some of the golden rules of creating a marketing plan that brings results in a limited budget.
Planning and defining the goals of an online marketing campaign is crucial for its effectiveness. Working on real projects under the guidance of a mentor is the best chance to learn how to create, develop and implement a good marketing plan.