10-step Guide to Creating a Winning Marketing Plan

10-step Guide to Creating a Winning Marketing Plan

By Yetta Blair

Download The Step-by-Step Guide Here


The key to growing sales and adding profit to your bottom line is implementing a sound marketing strategy into your business plan. Below is a step-by-step plan to help you create a winning marketing plan for your business.

1. Executive Summary. An executive summary is a snapshot of your overall plan. You should include the following: a description of your product; the differential advantage of your product; the investment needed; and the anticipated results.

2. Introduction. Describe in detail what your product or service is and how it fits into the market.

3. Situational Analysis. Your marketing plan should include an analysis of the situation you are facing with your product or service. Included should be: The Situational Environs; The Neutral Environs; The Competitor Environs; and your Company Environs. Below is a description of each.

• Situational Environs. What is the forecast demand for the product: is it growing or declining. Who is the decision maker? Who is the purchase agent? (How, when, where, what and why do they buy?) What are the Social and cultural factors. How is technology affecting your product?
 
• The Neutral Environs. How does the availability or unavailability of funds affect the situation? Anything going on in the government environment that can affect marketing this product? Anything going on in the media favor, or not, this product. Any special interest groups, other than competitors, likely to affect your plans?
 
• The competitor Environs. Describe your competitors, their products, plans, experience, know how, financial, human, and capital resources, suppliers, and strategy. Do their customers like them? If so, why? What marketing channels do they use? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
 
• Your Company Environs. Describe your products, experience, know-how, financial, human, and capital resources and suppliers. Do you enjoy the favor of your customers? If so, why? What are your strengths and weaknesses?

4. The Target Market. Describe exactly who your customers are. You can define your target market by demographics (such as age, income, education); their geographic location; their job, profession, industry; or their life-style (their activities, interests, opinions). Also, include the size of each market.

5. Problems and Opportunities. List them one by one and explain why is it a problem or opportunity and how you plan to take advantage of each opportunity and what you plan to do about each problem.

6. Marketing objectives and goals. Explain your objectives and goals in detail - what you intend to accomplish in terms of overall sales, market share, return on investment, or any other goal. Make sure they are SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

7. Marketing Strategy. The what-to-do section of your plan. Specifically describe what you must do to reach your goals and objectives.

8. Marketing Tactics. Describe how you will carry out your strategy. For example, in war, a strategy is what is done before you arrive to the battlefield and what is done on the battlefield is your tactics. List the action required to implement your strategy including the timing of the actions. This is your marketing mix.

9. Implementation and Control. Compute sales projections and cash flow and calculate your break-even point. Know these things on a monthly basis. You can use these after implementation to keep the project on track and within budget.

10. Summary. Discuss advantages, costs and profits and clearly state the differential advantage or competitive advantage that your service or product offers over the competition. This is what you have that your competition lacks. This will tell you why your plan will succeed.