Marketing is an essential aspect of any organization’s growth. Focusing on marketing helps position the brands and reach other goals. Because of these reasons, organizing a marketing plan becomes very crucial.
But what exactly is a marketing plan, and how can you create one that truly works?
A marketing plan is a strategic roadmap used to organize, execute, and track a marketing strategy over a given period. Marketing plans can include different marketing strategies for various marketing teams in the company, all of which work towards the same goal. It is usually a part of a business plan, which describes all of the necessary aspects of a business, including its goals, values, mission statement, budget, strategies, etc. In this guide, we’ll delve into the essence of a marketing plan and walk you through nine essential steps to build a strategy that drives results.
WHAT IS A MARKETING PLAN?
A marketing plan is an action plan that guides an organization’s marketing efforts for a specific period in promoting its products or services. It details the goals, target audience, marketing strategies, budget, and metrics for measuring success, ensuring effective reach, and influencing potential customers. A marketing plan is like a blueprint that defines how a business intends to attract, engage, and retain customers.
BENEFITS OF HAVING A MARKETING PLAN
The main objective of a Marketing Plan is to write down strategies in an organized manner. It helps keep track of all the objectives/measures taken to achieve them, and the success of the measures taken. The marketing plan includes analyzing the existing situations, providing information about those situations and the current marketing opportunities, forecasting and starting with planning, selecting target markets, defining marketing objectives, designing and developing a marketing strategy, and allocating resources to achieve these objectives.
A solid Marketing Plan helps you know what you want, how you plan to get it, and how your progress has been so far.
TYPES OF MARKETING PLANS
Marketing Plans are created to fulfill several objectives, such as launching a new product, increasing brand awareness, expanding into a new market, repositioning a product, etc. According to the different objectives, there are several types of Marketing Plans. These are as follows:
- New Product Launch Marketing Plan – It lays out a strategy to promote a new product. It requires understanding your target audience, setting goals and objectives, establishing a budget, deciding on Brand awareness strategies, and other campaign ideas.
- Content Marketing Plan – It is a strategic guide that outlines the creation, publication, distribution, management, etc. of content to achieve Marketing goals. It ensures that the overall Marketing strategy is compatible with the target audience.
- Social Media Marketing Plan – A strategy that outlines how a business should use Social Media to achieve its Marketing goals. It includes setting goals, defining the target audience, choosing social media channels, creating and scheduling content, and analyzing the results.
- Growth Marketing Plan – It is a long-term strategy that majorly focuses on the customer journey as a whole rather than focusing on just one stage of the funnel. It aims at increasing the company’s revenue by improving customer loyalty and retention.
- Time-Based Plan – Time-based plans are specifically designed, keeping in mind the time of the business cycle. For this, the company first notices its performance during particular periods in previous years and then formulates a strategy based on it.
HOW TO MAKE A MARKETING PLAN?
Developing a Marketing plan can be a trick proposition. But with the accurate steps at the appropriate time, one can ace this crucial aspect.
STEP 1. Understand your business and decide your goal and objectives –
The first step of this process should be to know your current position. You must analyze your current state and look for openings for other opportunities as well. You can take time to clearly understand and define your brand, defining your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). After considering all this, you will have a clear vision of what to expect from this process. It will prevent any misinterpretations or unrealistic expectations from the process.
Also read Building A Strong Brand Identity: 7 Steps To Follow
STEP 2. Understand your customers –
This will be an essential step to formulate a clear Marketing Plan. You must rightly identify your customers and research more about their behavior, motivations for buying a product, what they prefer, their feedback about products, etc.
Here one needs to find answers to questions such as –
- What age group needs this product the most?
- Why do the customers prefer my product over other competitor’s products?
- In what ways, according to my customers, Can I improve my product?
- Through what channel are the maximum products sold?
- Are there any products that are complimentary to mine?
STEP 3. Position or reposition your brand –
After going through the first two steps, you must have discovered the gaps that need to be filled. In simpler words, now you know what the market wants, and what is it that you are offering. Next, you just need to align your product with the customer’s demand. If you are marketing for a new product, you can easily position your brand in any way you want. But even if your product has already been launched, you can reposition it by changing a few elements such as Packaging, tagline, color elements, USP, etc.
STEP 4. Choose the right medium or technique –
This is an equally crucial step. Choosing the appropriate technique can make a big difference in deciding how your message is being carried forward. The medium should be selected keeping in mind the target group and the type of message you want to transmit. For example, if your target audience is kids, then the appropriate mediums can be Television, advertisements through songs and rhymes, and so on. But if your target audience is adults, then your medium should be Social Media Platforms, posters and hoardings, Collaborations with influencers and celebrities, etc.
Also Read Digital Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing | Pros and Cons
STEP 5. Set Budget Parameters –
One of the foundational elements of a successful business is a robust and fixed allocation of resources. Since there are many aspects of a Marketing strategy, a company needs to decide how much resources should be allocated to each vertical. Budgeting should be focused on allowing enough allocation to each campaign or area.
STEP 6. Keep track of competitors –
While working on yourself, you should also keep an eye on your competitors. One of the easiest ways to do this is through a SWOT analysis of any competitor. SWOT analysis will give comprehensive information that will not only help in understanding a competitor’s present standing but also help you analyze their future course of action.
STEP 7. Develop an attractive message or other creative assets –
The next step in this process would be to come up with innovative and catchy taglines, brand names, product varieties, posts, videos, posters, and other such content. The content that you associate with you should be in line with your product and more specifically its USP.
STEP 8. Integrate the elements and Execute your plan –
Once you have worked on all wings of your strategy, you can just put them all together to make one well-informed and researched Marketing Plan. You can re-work areas that you think need work. After you are satisfied with the final plan, focus on its execution. Selecting the right time, medium, locations, etc. will all be a part of this.
STEP 9. Analyze and evaluate the effects –
Once execution starts, look at customer reviews, reviews by critics, competitors, etc. Tracking all this will help you understand what impact your strategy made. It also helps you look at your strategy’s weaknesses and strengths. You can then take appropriate measures to mitigate the problems to make your plan even more effective.
Also Read How To Use Social Media To Grow Your Business – 9 Tips
It is possible that you may not see instant positive feedback and any major impact of your strategy. You may need to take some time before you judge your plan. But once you can see the problems with it, you need to be quicker to make changes for the better.
To conclude, devising a clear, comprehensive, and well–researched Marketing plan is a task that needs to be undertaken to avoid further problems. By following the 9 steps mentioned in this blog, you can create a strategic roadmap that helps you understand what exactly you have to do and what are some of the best ways to do it. We hope you had a good time reading this blog.
