Marketing is an essential component of a business. When a business markets well, the sales always follow easily. A business with strong and convincing marketing plan will gather leads and sales than a business with a weak and ineffective marketing plan.
Prior to writing a marketing plan for your business, you have to understand the relationship marketing, selling and customer service plays in business development. Basically, marketing entails all your strategies and tactics aimed at grabbing the attention of your target customers and converting them into leads or prospects.
Selling is the medium through which you convert your leads and prospects to customers. Customer services ensure that you serve your customers well, so that your customers become your brand evangelist—evangelizing your business and getting customers for your business.
That means marketing is the foundation of every business and must be taken seriously! Well, so we want to look at how you can write a marketing plan for your business.
There are basically three steps to write a marketing plan for your business:
- Research
- Analysis
- Documentation
Research
The research process is the preparation step. You research your internal and external business environment. You make all the necessary preparations through the research process to develop the marketing plan for your business.
Ideally there five areas of focus for your research:
- Market Research: It deals with researching and knowing your target customers—who they are, where they are and why they will buy your products and services.
- Industry Research: It deals with researching your industry and finding the value chain in the industry and how the industry operates and runs.
- Competitor Research: It deals with researching your competitors—finding their strength, weakness.
- Buyer’s Journey Research: It deals with understanding the journey your customer goes through to find your business, make enquiries and finally buy your business products/services.
- Marketing Mix Research: It deals with researching and finding the various tactics used in the industry to market and promote to the various target customers.
Analysis
This involves the process of evaluating your research data, analyzing your findings and understanding how it correlates with your business dynamics. It entails understanding your marketing research collected and knowing how to develop a strategy through it to develop our business.
In this process, you have to analyze each of the research. There are basically, six areas to analyze here:
- Market Analysis
- Industry Analysis
- Competitor Analysis
- Buyer’s Journey Analysis
- Marketing Mix Analysis
- SWOT Analysis
The SWOT Analysis involves finding your strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Once the other 5 areas have been done, the SWOT analysis can be done well.
Documentation
This is the last process in the development of your marketing plan. It involves setting goals, developing strategies and documenting the entire plan on paper so that it can be used. Bear in mind that a marketing plan is a working document—not a static document!
The marketing plan will and must change with time—so the marketing plan must simply guide, regulate and monitor the marketing activities of the business. So your marketing plan must not be thrown away after it has been written—it must be used as a yardstick to regulate your marketing activities.
In writing your marketing plan, there are 8 areas of focus:
- The Executive Summary: It provides a summary of your marketing objectives, strategies, tactics and action plan.
- The Background/Environment: It captures a core understanding your target marketing, industry profile and other State regulators in your industry.
- Marketing Objectives: It provides a preview of your marketing goals and intentions for your marketing activities.
- Marketing Strategy & Tactics: It provides a way by which you can accomplish your marketing objectives. It entails your marketing and promotional methods.
- Implementation & Action Plan: It shows how you the frequency, intensity and degree to which you will execute your marketing plan to achieve your objectives. Your action plan is outlined here.
- Budget: This defines the amount you will be investing in marketing and promoting your business to your target mark.
- Monitoring & Evaluation: It clarifies how you will monitor, measure and evaluate your day to day activities so that you can achieve your marketing goals.
- Conclusion: It provides a brief conclusion for your marketing plan.
Once you have written your marketing plan, carefully execute it to achieve your marketing goals. A marketing plan on its own will do no good to your business until it has been carefully executed to grow and develop your business. As you execute, analyze and measure results to fine tune the plan!
Hay, got questions on your mind? Share it below.
Anyway if you need assistance to develop a business plan, marketing plan or sales plan for your business, don’t forget our address. We focus on helping t develop, grow and expand business operations.
Think Expand Limited
Email: [email protected]
Call: +233 548334499/+ 233 2228133
WhatsApp: + 233548334499.
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