A Marketing Plan provides direction for your marketing activities. It does not have to be long, elaborate and cost you hundreds of dollars. Whether your company is making $600,000 a month or just $1,600, once you are in business, your company should have a marketing plan.After completing extensive research in the area of Marketing Management, one could conclude that a marketing plan is like a road map. It is a simple, strategic plan/map that shows each road the company will take in order to maintain or acquire a particular market position in the future.
Your marketing plan should include the following components:
* Executive Summary
This executive summary appears at the beginning of the plan but is usually completed at the end. This is a mere brief overview of the dvarious sections of the marketing plan.
* Situation Analysis
The situation analysis is clear explanation of the external and internal environments in which your company operates. In this section of the marketing plan you collect and interpret internal, competitive and environmental information. The situation analysis presents a summary of these environments and summarizes the company’s performance in the market. Through the situation analysis every business is provided with a systematic view of its marketing environment by analysing the customer, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) in relation to the competition. The situation analysis includes internal, external and customer analyses, also known as the product, position, and prospect analyses.
* Marketing Objectives & Goals
After analysing the information presented in the situation analysis, the next step is to develop marketing objectives. These should be based on an understanding of the company’s strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats. Your company’s objectives will drive the entire marketing initiative. Objectives must be specific, measurable, time-specific and achievable and form the basis of the specific strategies to be employed.
* Target Markets
Your target markets are the groups of persons or segments in society that you wish to sell your product to; those who would have shown potential or proven evidence that they will purchase your product and/or service. Your target markets are those person with whom you will create an exchange with.
* Marketing Strategy
The marketing strategy are the specific steps which the company will take to meet the objectives which have been set out earlier in order to reach the target markets and deliver the product or service to them. Under this section, a communication strategy outlining how the company will communicate its services (public relations and advertising strategies) and/or products with the target markets is inclusive in this section. The channels of distribution are as well as the sales strategy to be adopted is addressed.
* Implementation
At this stage of the marketing plan, the programmes outlined in your strategies must be coordinated in an effort to achieve the plan’s goals and meet its objectives. Timing is a vital factor of consideration during the implementation stage. It “affects the placement of advertising and the degree of impact the marketing effort will have on the targeted market”.
Evaluation / Control
Evaluation is extremely important and once the advertising campaigns are in motion you must evaluate if your objectives have been achieved. Your marketing strategies must be evaluated in order to determine how successful they have been in achieving the expected or projected. Should marketing strategies prove to be ineffective, the redevelopment of objectives and or new positioning strategies may be necessary.
In the marketing plan your company must therefore spell out specific evaluation tactics to measure the effectiveness of the marketing strategies. Specific tactics would include a research plan which will state clearly the research tools to be used to gather relevant information .
During the evaluation process the firm “tracks results and monitors new developments in the environment”. Constant changes in the environment might also force the marketer to adjust their future marketing strategies.
Every company needs a comprehensive plan that provide direction for meeting the marketing objectives set.
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