Writing a Marketing Plan

Marketing is a necessary process that identifies and satisfies the customer needs of a business entity. It also involves researching new opportunities and reviewing and improving current advertising strategies to stay ahead in the market.

Web Windows firmly believes that a marketing strategy can make or break your business. It is, therefore, imperative to devise a marketing plan that defines your business objectives and spells out a marketing and advertising strategy to capture a niche or an entire market.

Our resources at Web Windows can help you create an effective marketing plan or guide you to draft your own blueprint to success.

Defining your business strategy

At the outset, define your business strategy, or in other words, the direction and the scope of your business and what it aims to aceve in the long term.

The following questions can help you define your business strategy:

• What are your products and services?
• How do you wish to price your products and services?
• How do you wish to promote your products and services?
• Who are your target customers?
• Do you have a strategy and budget to reach your customers?

Coordinate these points to reach your customers, give them a clear message about the unique selling point of your products and services, and turn your efforts into sales.

Analyzing your business strategy for drafting an effective market plan

Your marketing plan is all about bringing your products and services to the market and reaching your target customers.

The SWOT analysis framework: To operate successfully in a market, you need to understand where you stand with respect to the other players. For this, do a SWOT analysis to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with your areas of business and then draft your market plan accordingly. A SWOT analysis allows you to scan both the internal and external environment in which your business will function.

Your strengths and weaknesses are integral to your internal business environment. Providing cost-effective, high quality services may constitute your strength; your budget limiting your ability to market them may be your weakness.

Strengths: Your strengths provide you the competitive advantage over your rivals. Strengths can include factors such as good reputation, strong brand awareness in the market and exclusive access to resources.

Weaknesses: Weaknesses can include a high cost structure, weak brand name or lack of access to proper distribution channels for marketing your products and services.

Opportunities and threats allow you to understand the external environment for your business.

Opportunities: Keep an eye for new opportunities for they may allow you to explore new avenues of growth for your products. There may be a change in government policy, for example, a more liberal trade policy that will give you the opportunity to explore new markets across borders.

Threats: These can include factors such as a shift in customer taste away from your products and services or any change in government policy that may adversely affect your profit margins.

You should also scan the macro-environment of your business entity in terms of the PEST factors:

• Political and legal changes such as tax policy and employment laws
• Economic factors such as interest rates and exchange rates and inflation rate
• Social factors such as changing attitudes and lifestyles, age distribution and career attitudes
• Technological factors such as R&D and any new inventions

Developing a marketing strategy for your marketing plan

Web Windows suggests that you answer the following questions to develop your marketing strategy.

Your customers

• Who are your potential customers?
• What are the requirements of your existing customers?
• What are the factors that affect their buying decisions?

Market

• What is the size of the market for the products and services you offer?
• What are the growth characteristics for these products and services?
• What are the opportunities that you can target?

Competition

• What is that you can offer which is not already available?
• What are the profiles of your competitors?
• Can you compete with the quality, price and delivery of similar products in the market?

Your existing customers should be your primary targets in any marketing and advertising strategy. Familiarity, in business, breeds trust. Also, it is more cost effective to reach existing customers than attracting new ones through advertising.

If you are targeting new customers, first do a careful research analysis of the market to:

• Understand current trends and what customers require in the different product segments that you offer.
• Study what the competition is like in each segment.
• Identify the segments which offer you a competitive advantage.
• Do a cost analysis to assess profitability in the segments.
• Work out an advertising strategy to reach potential customers.

Web Windows recommends that studying the market should be a regular process as trends, competition and customer behaviour keep changing. So plan your marketing strategy in a way that it is flexible enough to anticipate and accommodate these changes.

Implementing your marketing strategy into a reality

An effective marketing strategy should have the following defined, and in place, for a successful plan implementation:

Product: What is your product and how does it stand apart from the others in the market in terms of quality, price and the value addition it provides to the customers? Based on these factors, decide on your product positioning to create awareness and capture the market.

Pricing: Is your product competitively priced? If it is priced above the market value, do you have the strategy in place to justify it? Again, your pricing will depend on whether you wish to sell limited editions of the product to premium clientele or target the masses.

Place: Where is it that you want to sell your product? Is it for a global audience or is it meant for localized customers? These factors will help you decide your advertising and distribution channels to create awareness and sell your product.

Promotion: Choose between advertising channels such as TV, radio, print media, tradeshows, Public Relations and the Internet to reach your existing and potential customers.

Targets: Set realistic and measurable targets and the deadlines to meet them.

Budget: The budget should take into consideration all resources you would require to launch and market your product. In other words, specify a budget for each activity listed in the marketing plan.

Distribution channels: Depending on the penetration level you wish to reach, decide the budget and the means by which your products and services will reach your target customers.

Customer care: Ensure that your employees have adequate knowledge and are trained to answer customer queries and take advantage of all leads that may occur.

Schedule: Develop a schedule for putting your marketing strategy in place and allow for some flexibility. An inability to meet the schedule would increase costs.

Once everything is in place, designate responsibility for each process to key individuals to ensure that everything is implemented as per schedule and within the budget.

Monitoring your marketing strategy

Have the right people at the right place to monitor the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. They should be able to:

• Ensure processes occur as per timelines.
• Analyze customer response.
• Fix responsibility and respond to any lapse in schedule.
• Respond to customer queries.
• Review the process as and when required.