The marketing plan

Successful businesses have a plan.  The more that you know, the easier it will be to close sales and retain satisfied customers.

To achieve success, there are lots of decisions to make, and it can get complicated keeping track of everything. The way to handle this is with a plan.

The plan can help guide your actions and help you to make better decisions. This is the basis for your marketing plan, which provides a guide for moving forward.

The marketing strategy is the part of the business plan that addresses:

• sales
• pricing
• profit
• advertising
• promotions
• direct selling activities
• personal sales
• public relations.

Each element of the marketing plan requires a strategy that describes what the goals are, and how they will be achieved.

The Process

Strategic marketing plans have a number of similarities, including the need to address:

Planning what needs to be done.

Implementation of the identified action items, or initiatives.

Controlling the results, or making sure that you are keeping track of the important deliverables.

The 4P’s of Marketing

No matter how simple, or how complicated, or what your products/services are, the marketing strategy focuses on 4 key components.  As you begin to develop your plan, start by listing these components, and then coming up with some specific action items that address each one.

Product – (size, shape, weight, packaging, colors, design, logos, functionality, brand). This focuses on the attributes, or characteristics, of the products that you sell. How will you describe these products/services to your customers? Do you carry equipment from name brand manufacturers; offer factory-approved replacement parts; use tradespeople that are trained?

Place – (where is the product/service located, facilities, transportation, inventory requirements, service). Do you have a showroom; do you bring products to your customers for evaluation; how many service trucks are available for customer calls?

Price – (list price, retail price, discounts, specials, credit terms, collections). Do you provide value pricing; are there seasonal specials; how about deals on warranties?

Promotion – (advertising, personal selling, sales promotions, direct marketing, & PR). Where do you advertise; do you use local media; what are you communicating with each message?

The 5C’s of Marketing

Another common view of marketing strategy is focused on the 5C’s.  This is simply another approach to help you develop your plan.  Each component should be addressed, and specific action items created.

1. Company – what do we do and what do we sell? Collaborators – are there any strategic alliances that will help my business to grow?
2. Customers – what is my target market? Who are my customers?
3. Competition – who are my main competitors? What are their strengths & weaknesses? What is my differentiator?
4. Climate – what is the business environment: economy, rules & regulations, the industry?
5. Collaborators – Determine if there is an outside source or third party help that can help the company such as distributors, suppliers etc

Implementation

If you have created a marketing strategy, it is essential that each and every part of the strategy be put into play, or implemented.

Too many businesses have spent time and resources in developing their strategy, only to fail in the execution.

The value that you are looking to create with the plan is dependent on how well you implement each part.

Successful implementation requires:

1. An owner for each initiative.
2. SMART objectives that: specify the specific tasks, what is to be measured, an agreement that it is achievable, an understanding that the initiative is relevant to the business success, and definitive time constraints.
3. Clearly defined expectations.
4. Appropriate controls and measures to ensure that the train stays on track.

Control

One of the responsibilities of management is to exercise control over business activities.  This means more than making sure that employees are working on the things they were told to work on.  That is not the real purpose of control.  

Control is to make sure that the expected results are being achieved.

For example, if the revenue plan calls for sales of $25,000./month, a monthly sales report can be generated to show how you are doing.

If the results are not what is expected, management considers what corrective action may be required to get the train, ‘back on the tracks’.

Controls can be any means of providing summary reports, documenting progress, or lack of progress, that are presented to management on a regular schedule.

A basic review of these control reports usually shows 1 of 3 possible outcomes:

1. On target – good news
2. Better than target – great news
3. Less than target – ask questions; why is there an issue, what can we do about it, and who will do it?

Marketing Research

Marketing research is a specific, planned activity that focuses on gathering the information required for a business to make decisions that will lead to positive outcomes, such as:

increased sales

improved financial results

product and service decisions

increases in customer satisfaction.

Marketing research helps a business understand the market that they are in…who are the customers? What the market size is, what are the market growth opportunities? How can the market be segmented?

It can also help answer questions on how the business is viewed by the market…customer satisfaction level, brand awareness, customer preference, competitor response, etc.

Where to Start

Before you rush off and start researching, you will need to do a little planning first. Things to think about:

• What do I need to know, and why is it important?
• Where is the information?
• When do I need this information?
• What is my budget for marketing research?
• What will I do with the research?

Secondary research

When you are ready to begin your research, you need to make a decision on whether you need secondary data or primary data.

Now, we discuss secondary data 1st because it is the easiest to obtain, is relatively quick, and is the least expensive source of data. This data is general in nature, and can be obtained from many sources such as:

• State data bases – http://www.myflorida.com/
• U.S. Department of Commerce – https://www.commerce.gov/
• Small Business Administration – https://www.sba.gov/
• Chamber of Commerce – http://www.flchamber.com/

Primary research

Primary research is certainly the most valuable to a business because it designed to answer questions specifically from a select group of customers, or potential customers, and it applies to your products and services, not general market information.  This also means that it is the most time-consuming and expensive research to conduct.

This type of research requires a number of steps:

• Identify a particular market segment.
• Determine how many surveys must be conducted to get results that you can use.
• Create the survey instruments with questions and a guide for survey takers.
• conduct the surveys.
• Analyze the results.
• Make product or service decisions based on what you’ve learned.

You have many different approaches to conducting primary research. They differ in the complexity of the process, and the cost and include:

• Interviews with individual participants
• Focus group setting
• Telephone surveys
• Mail surveys
• E-mail surveys
• On-line surveys including social media

When to use primary and secondary research

Secondary

You want general information about a market such as population, income levels, education, household units, etc.

This information will help you to do a preliminary analysis of potential new markets for your products/services.

Primary

You are going to make a substantial investment in time and resources to expand your business to a new market, or to add new products/services to your offering.

This information will assist you in making a cost/benefit analysis on your choices

What to Measure

Part of the interview or survey process is to determine how responses will be measured. For example, if you are conducting individual interviews and are asking open-ended questions, you will need a way to summarize the responses to identify specific themes.

If you are using a survey form that presents the participant with a scale, you will need to decide how many choices will be available to answer the question…never, almost never, sometimes, often, always.

Final Thought

Whatever format you select for getting your data, you will be spending some of your precious time and resources to get it.

Make sure that you:

• Know what information you need
• Why you need this information
• How you will use the information