How to make a good marketing plan

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What is the marketing plan? Why is marketing planning critical to the success of a business? This article is a comprehensive guide on how to make a marketing plan, and the first part of the article will tell you the answers to both questions.

In almost all businesses, successful marketing starts with a good sales plan. Big companies often have hundreds of-page plans, and small companies have to use half a dozen of their marketing plans. Please put your marketing plan into a three-hole binder, which can be divided at least quarterly, and better if you divide it into monthly. Remember to label your monthly report on sales and production, which will help you keep track of your planned performance.

The general plan covers a span of one year. For small businesses, this is usually the best way to think about marketing behavior. One year of time, the world is changeable, coming and coming, the market is developing, the customer is flowing. We will then suggest that you plan for the medium-term future of the enterprise, or the two time after the start, in some part of the program, but the majority of the plan should also focus on the coming year.

It will take you a few months to make this plan, if only a few pages. Making this plan is "the most important" for marketing. Although the implementation of the plan will also face challenges, but decide what to do and how to do, is always the biggest marketing difficulties. Most marketing plans start at the beginning of the company's inception, but if you have any difficulties, you can start at the beginning of the fiscal year.

Who do you want to show your marketing plan? The answer is: every member of the company. Many companies often see their marketing plans as very, very confidential documents, this should be one of the following two reasons that look very different: if the planning content is too dry that management is embarrassed to let them out of the light, or the content is too rich, covering a lot of information ... Whatever the reason, you should be aware that the marketing plan is particularly valuable in the competition of the company's market.

You can't make a marketing plan without getting other people involved. No matter how big the company is, you need to get feedback from all the companies in the planning process: finance, production, personnel, supply, and so on, of course, except for sales. This is important because it will drive your company's departments to implement your marketing plan. For issues such as what works and how to achieve goals, the key players in the company can provide you with meaningful advice and share insights into any potential, untapped market opportunities that can provide a new perspective on your plan. If your company takes a personal management model, you have to juggle multiple aspects at the same time, but at least the meeting time is shortened.

What is the relationship between a marketing plan and a business plan or a prospect statement? A business plan is an elaboration of your business, that is, what you do, what you don't do, and what your ultimate goal is. It covers more than marketing, it can include the location of the company, employees, capital, strategic alliances and so on, it is "foresight", that is, use those inspiring words to articulate your company's ambitious goals. Business plans are like the American Constitution for your business: if what you want to do goes beyond the scope of your business plan, you need to either change your mind or revise your plan. The company's business plan should provide a good environment for the marketing plan, so two plans must be consistent.

The sales plan, on the other hand, is full of meaning. will allow you to benefit from the following several aspects.

Appeal: The marketing plan will keep your team together. To the company, you are the captain of the business, and your team will have confidence in you, with a sail map, driving experience and a good idea of the port of destination. Companies tend to underestimate the impact of "marketing plans" on their own people-they want to be part of a team that is passionate and works together for complex tasks. If you want your employees to be so loyal to the company, it's important to share with them your plans for the company's future years. Employees are not always able to understand financial forecasts, but a well-written and thoughtful marketing plan will excite them. You should consider opening your marketing plan to a whole company, even if it's only a thumbnail. Doing your plan in a high-profile way may create an attraction for business speculation. Your employees will be proud to be part of it.

Roadmap to success: We all know that the plan is not perfect. How do you know what's going to happen in 12 months or five years? So is it futile to make a marketing plan? A waste of time that could have been spent meeting with customers or fine-tuning the product? It is possible, but only in a narrow sense. But if you don't make a plan, the results are visible, and an imperfect plan is far better than no plan. Back to our captain's metaphor, a 5-10-degree deviation from the target port is better than no destination in mind. The meaning of sailing, after all, is to reach somewhere, if there is no plan, then you will drift aimlessly in the sea, although sometimes found on land, but more often in the borderless sea struggle. And, in the absence of a sailing chart, few people will remember what the captain had discovered except the bottom of the sea when you sank.

Company's operating manual: Your child's first bike and your new VCR will come with a thick set of instructions, and running your company is much more complicated. The marketing plan will take your company to success Step-by-step, which is more important than the prospect statement. To make a real marketing plan, you need to know your company from top to bottom to make sure that the links are in the best possible way. What can you do if you want to grow your company in the coming year? That's to make a big to-do list and mark out this year's specific tasks.

Idea Memo: You don't need to have your financial staff memorize all the data in your mind. Financial reporting is a digital lifeline for any company, regardless of the size of the company. So is marketing. Use your written documents to sketch out your game plan. Maybe someone left, maybe some new entrants, maybe you have a memory loss, maybe something makes the change stressful, and the information in the written plan will consistently remind you of the things you once agreed on.

High-level reflection: In the day-to-day noisy business competition, it is difficult to turn your attention to the overall situation, especially to those that are not directly related to the day-to-day operation of the link. You need to spend some time now and then to think deeply about your company, such as whether the company meets the expectations of you and your employees, whether there is a place to innovate, whether you get everything you need from your products, sales people and markets, and so on. The process of making a marketing plan is the best time to do such a high level of thinking. As a result, some companies give their best salespeople a holiday and others come home. Some people gather in local small hotels to develop marketing plans, away from telephones and fax machines that allow them to think deeply and draw the most accurate sketches of the company's present.

Ideally, after setting up a marketing plan for the last few years, you can sit back and reread your plan in the order of the year and compare it with the company's development. Admittedly, sometimes it's hard to make time for this (because there's an annoying real world that needs to go all out), but this process can help you get a sense of what you've done for your business over the years.

(Via entrepreneur, start-up state compilation)