What describes simple truths, is not written in one day and can increase sales hundreds of times? Yes, this is a marketing plan for promoting a company.
Your customers will buy from you again and again, and your competitors will be jealous. Want to learn how to create an effective marketing plan? Then this article is for you.
Why do most companies ignore developing a marketing strategy?
Because they spend more time on financial and production plans, while it is the marketing plan that determines what your revenue will be this year.
When written correctly, a company’s marketing plan provides answers to the following questions:
- how to reduce production costs;
- how and where to attract new customers;
- how not to miss old customers;
- what new areas should the company explore, etc.
A marketing promotion plan is a real tool for reducing costs and increasing company profits! Officially, a market promotion plan can be defined as follows: a marketing plan is a set of planned decisions, drawn up in the form of a document, compatible with other company plans and included in the company’s business plan.
This plan can contain both short-term and long-term goals, and the plan itself can be written out on either 1 or 50 pages, depending on the size of the company and the goals being pursued.
If the company lacks marketing, this leads to:
- failures caused by spontaneous and rash decisions;
- conflicts that arise between departments;
- uncertainties in development (the company simply does not know who its target audience is);
- chaos in procurement, diversification of forces and concentration of efforts.
The purpose of a marketing promotion plan is to deliver and achieve the company’s goals. Without well-organized marketing, the company lacks basic systematization of ideas.
Planning frequency: choosing the optimal period for drawing up a marketing plan for product promotion
It all depends on the scale of the company’s activities. Large companies develop a marketing plan annually, and its development itself is included in the company’s strategic plan. The plan is drawn up for 3-6 years and is adjusted every year taking into account changes in the market. The advertising plan is being adjusted especially strongly.
If your company is small, then you can determine the frequency of the marketing plan yourself and it depends on your company’s need for it. For small firms, a SWOT analysis is usually sufficient.
The elements of the strategy, which are approved in the plan each year, undergo annual changes, reinforced by new tactics, goals and methods of implementation. With any major changes in the market, the company always changes the position of the product, and the position of the product, in turn, changes the entire marketing plan.
How to properly create a marketing plan for product promotion
Let’s look at what the process of drawing up a marketing plan for promoting a company consists of. It is worth noting that it always includes several stages and almost all of them are mandatory, because the market needs to be considered from all sides.
1. Analyzing market trends
At first glance, it seems that you are already aware of everything that is happening in the market, but this is not entirely true. Carefully analyze the trends in both your field of activity and the general market (later, general market trends will help you create advertising). Assess what has changed in the habits of customers, how they feel about the quality of the product and its cost, as well as how it is now “fashionable” to package the product.
2. Analyzing the product
Here you need to be as honest as possible, because your brainchild will have to be compared with the competitors’ product. Take a sober look at the shortcomings: perhaps your product is too expensive, low-quality, simple… Also find the strengths of the product or service you offer. Understand why consumers love it and why they could love it even more.
3. Choosing the target audience
It’s good if you already know your target client. What if not? If your company has successfully existed on the market for at least six months, then identifying your target audience will not be difficult, because most of them are your regular customers.
4. We determine the positioning of the product and its advantages
This point is similar to stage 2 of creating a plan, however, here you must use your imagination: what could your product ideally be? How to make him attractive? Here is the vector of product development for you now.
5. Thinking about strategy
You’ve figured out your competitors, product positioning, and target audience. It’s time to start understanding exactly how to act. Develop a product promotion strategy. Think about how you can improve or expand the range, how to promote the product on the market, what kind of advertising to run.
6. We draw up a plan for 1-5 years (depending on the scale)
When you know everything, write down your action strategy by month. Write down specific dates, numbers, the ideal you are striving for.
If you do everything right, your plan will solve the following problems:
- will give a complete description of the situation in which the company is now, including a SWOT analysis (analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the product);
- an activity plan regarding product promotion for the next 1-5 years with a detailed description of actions by month;
- budget for promotion;
- monitoring the implementation of the plan.
How to evaluate the effectiveness of the plan? It’s not nearly as simple as you might think. On the one hand, if you do not know how effective the progress according to the plan was, you cannot help but improve and adjust the plan. But it needs to be improved and adjusted, because the plan is rewritten and adjusted every year. On the other hand, the methods that are easiest to measure effectiveness will be a big hit to your company’s budget. If you are not ready to spend money on evaluating the plan, then you can use cheaper methods.
For example, you can conduct a survey among your customers about how they heard about you. This way you can evaluate how successful the advertising campaign was, as well as how correctly you chose the target audience. Another type of survey is a telephone survey, during which you can find out from customers such things as their attitude towards the product, and whether they would like to purchase the product from you again or not.
If you do not want to conduct a survey, then try to compare sales volumes before and after implementing marketing plan strategies. You can compare costs, defect rates and other financial aspects of the company – changes in them can also be caused by the implementation of techniques according to the product development plan.
Company promotion plan: how to order market research?
Hiring outside specialists is not always profitable. Of course, if you absolutely do not have the competence to draw up a plan yourself, or you do not have a marketing department that should do this, then you should think about contacting an outsourcing company. Remember how to choose it correctly:
- check how long the company has been on the market;
- read reviews, this is important;
- evaluate the number of employees and the scale of the business: the larger the outsourcing company, the better.
Outsourcing a marketing plan is preferable if your company is not going to be in business for many years. For “one-time” projects, an outsourcer is just right.
So, if you decide that you have room to increase your profits, then drawing up a marketing plan will be the right step. Whether you compile it yourself or entrust it to specialists is up to you. However, do not forget that the plan for the company’s presence in the market must be combined with financial and production plans.
