Develop a Marketing Plan

How to write a Mar­ket­ing Plan for your new business

One key ingre­di­ent of a suc­cess­ful busi­ness oper­a­tion is cre­at­ing and imple­ment­ing a mar­ket­ing plan. A mar­ket is a par­tic­u­lar group of buy­ers, users or clients who need your ser­vices or prod­ucts. Start by iden­ti­fy­ing your tar­get mar­ket and under­stand­ing its needs.

Con­duct­ing mar­ket research doesn’t mean shelling out the big bucks. Here’s an arti­cle on how to con­duct your own mar­ket research from WikiHow.

1. Write a clear and suc­cinct mis­sion state­ment.

The mis­sion state­ment describes your busi­ness, ser­vices, and the mar­kets it serves. It’s usu­ally only in a few sen­tences. For large com­pa­nies it can expand to two to three para­graphs. To learn more about mis­sion state­ments, click here.

2. List and describe tar­get or niche markets.

Who will your poten­tial groups of users or clients be? List them and iden­tify var­i­ous seg­ments of a mar­ket. Seg­ments can include spe­cific types of peo­ple in a com­pany by role — for exam­ple, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer, chief finan­cial offi­cer, or mar­ket­ing direc­tor. Seg­ments of the con­sumer mar­ket can be age groups or other groups that share com­mon traits, for exam­ple home­own­ers with small chil­dren. Niche mar­kets are tar­get por­tions within your iden­ti­fied seg­ments such as home­own­ers with small chil­dren in South­ern California.

3. Describe your services.

List the ser­vices or prod­ucts you now offer and iden­tify new ones you want to pro­vide. Decide what staff, exper­tise, and costs are required to offer these services.

4. Describe mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tional strategies.

Sev­eral approaches may be required for suc­cess. It’s impor­tant to under­stand why some­one wants to use or buy your ser­vices and which mar­ket­ing strat­egy they respond to. You should learn needs, prob­lems, indus­try trends, and buzz­words. Read trade jour­nals and attend pro­fes­sional con­fer­ences where you can meet prospec­tive users or buy­ers in per­son. Become active in civic and pro­fes­sional groups and form strate­gic rela­tion­ships. Find out what works best; you need inter­ac­tion with clients or prospec­tive clients.

Mar­ket­ing strate­gies include:

• Mail­ing out sales let­ters, capa­bil­ity brochures, fly­ers, and spe­cial offers reg­u­larly to the same groups in your tar­geted market.
• Adver­tis­ing in print media or direc­to­ries. Adver­tis­ing lends cred­i­bil­ity (image adver­tis­ing) and, like direct mar­ket­ing, must be continuous.
• Don’t neglect net­work­ing, either in per­son or online where your tar­get mar­kets congregate.
• Offer train­ing pro­grams to intro­duce your services.
• Write arti­cles for local media or pro­fes­sional jour­nals and newslet­ters that describe the ben­e­fits of your services.
• Face-​to-​face sell­ing can be costly if you see one per­son at a time. You may want to arrange to meet a group of peo­ple such as sev­eral depart­ment heads.
• Pump out pub­lic­ity and press releases to local news­pa­pers, radio, and tele­vi­sion stations.
• Even neg­a­tive pub­lic­ity can increase sales. Really!
• Take part in local and regional trade shows.
• When some­thing works, do it again. When some­thing flops, don’t repeat it.
• Most likely you’ll want to read mar­ket­ing and sales books, take classes and work­shops, even hire con­sul­tants and spe­cial­ists if necessary.

5. Know the com­pe­ti­tion.

You must learn about your com­peti­tors and how to posi­tion your­self in rela­tion to them. Write down your strengths. What do you want to empha­size? Next, write down what’s spe­cial about your ser­vices and how it ben­e­fits users. Do you beat the com­pe­ti­tion in value, price, prod­uct, or ser­vice, or a com­bi­na­tion of these? This is what your mar­ket­ing pro­gram will empha­size. Shout it out clearly with your mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als (see how we can help).

6. Set quan­tifi­able mar­ket­ing goals.

• Set the num­ber of new clients you aim to acquire.
• Deter­mine how many peo­ple you intend to reach.
• Estab­lish an amount of increased sales for a par­tic­u­lar ser­vice or prod­uct you offer or rev­enue you hope to generate.
• Offer coupons and track how many are used and from which sources.
• Count new leads gen­er­ated, phone calls, emails or page hits received.
• Stick to a detailed mar­ket­ing bud­get and break down expenses and prof­its for the parts of your mar­ket plan.

7. Mon­i­tor your results care­fully and often.

Just as you check the score­board when you attend a bas­ket­ball game, you should check your mar­ket­ing results. It’s like your busi­ness score­board. Are you ahead of the game or behind? Which mar­ket­ing strate­gies are work­ing and which aren’t? Track and eval­u­ate cus­tomers’ responses to every mar­ket­ing strat­egy you try.

Ask cus­tomers and clients why they find a ser­vice impor­tant. Dig for their ideas and sug­ges­tions you can use to intro­duce your prod­ucts and ser­vices to more prospects. Hear­ing your clients will enhance your mar­ket mate­ri­als. and you may be able to acquire tes­ti­mo­ni­als – always ask before you use these in future pro­mo­tional materials.

Tips:

Make find­ing and keep­ing cus­tomers with ongo­ing or repeat busi­ness a top priority.

Develop a cus­tomer pro­file to under­stand why exist­ing clients come back so you can direct your efforts to gain­ing more repeat business.

Focus on your tar­get mar­kets. If you try to attract every­one, you risk spread­ing your efforts and finances too thin to attract anyone.

Speak your tar­get audience’s lan­guage (the one they under­stand) to get your mes­sage across.

Keep a pad and pen­cil beside your phone. Ask how prospects heard about you or return­ing cus­tomers, how you can serve them bet­ter. Write it down.

Turn fail­ure to suc­cess. Mea­sure results for each mar­ket strat­egy so you can quickly mod­ify or drop the losers while expand­ing the win­ning strategies.

• Loss is a part of the aver­age gain.
  
• Loss inspires change.
  
• Loss teaches when we pay attention.

Rep­e­ti­tion, rep­e­ti­tion, rep­e­ti­tion. Those are the three rules to mar­ket­ing suc­cess. Use all three over and over again when find a good strategy.

Do you have a tip to share about mar­ket­ing? What has worked for you? What has not worked? Please tell us about it with a com­ment or email

If you are look­ing for some­one to give a pro­fes­sional look and qual­ity to your brochures, fly­ers, print media ads or web site design, check out our work here.