What is a marketing plan? It’s a written document that lays out the following information:
- Who is your target market? This group is made up of your customers and potential customers.
- What is the market landscape? Here you determine your competition and how you differentiate your company from theirs.
- What are your marketing goals? This is where you’ll outline in specific, tangible terms, what you’d like to accomplish, what benchmarks you need to reach, etc.
- What is your marketing strategy? You’ll need to outline how you plan to reach your target market, what your message will be, how will you convey the message most effectively, and what channels you’ll use to communicate with your target market.
- Logistics. This is where you’ll decide what actual tactics you’re going to use to implement the strategy, how much it’s going to cost, and develop a timeline to follow.
- Evaluation. You will need to measure your success. Before you implement step 1 of your plan, you need to have a useful way to measure your the outcome or output of your efforts.
You don’t need a fancy computer program or any special knowledge before writing a marketing plan. Doing your research helps, but the most important thing is that you have a plan that is written down on paper. In the beginning you’ll find yourself making adjustments and adding to it as you learn more about what works and what doesn’t. But having a plan of any kind is always better than having no plan at all.
