Writing an effective marketing plan involves both looking inward to know the reality of the company, its potential to address a particular project that marks the direction of the company, and how to analyze the outside factors.
Below you’ll find some vital steps on creating a plan that will keep both you and your potential clients/investors happy.
Regardless of its different peculiarities, the objective will be to develop a strategy that allows us to start engines realistically, to meet the objectives proposed both locally and internationally. In the end, we will obtain a marketing plan adapted to the characteristics of the company, capable of answering the key questions and also giving them answers that guide us when it comes to walking in this new direction.
The effectiveness of a plan, therefore, is intended to be useful and serve as a valid roadmap, allowing you to take certain steps in the direction planned, regardless of unforeseen events and events that inevitably occur.
Step #1. Adapt the plan to the size of the company
In a way, it can be said that the creation of the marketing plan is already an achievement. Not only because it is usually considered to be a complicated task that requires specialized knowledge. In fact it is a priority but not an obstacle. Therefore, adapting the plan to the size of the company and having realistic expectations, in which too many factors do not intervene, is a way to achieve effectiveness.
It is not about making a plan of lower quality, but to adjust that plan to the maximum to the needs of the organization so that it is feasible at the time of doing it and also when we are going to follow it. In this sense, we increase its effectiveness.
However, despite these common facts, carrying it out is key, because even the viability of a project is decided from it. For example, it often serves as a document from which to get private funding or public subsidies.
The most important thing for a small business to include in its marketing plan is a clear understanding of customers and competitors. Logically, a marketing plan is much more than just that, but the quote illustrates well the idea of the importance of attending to the essential and, if necessary, the possibility of making an adaptation without loss of reliability.
On the other hand, developing the issue, startups can focus on the fundamental aspects when setting objectives. Although it is a document that involves the collaboration of experts from different areas, basically every custom marketing plan includes the following four areas:
Step #2. Design the offer thinking about the client
Starting from a clear vision that answers the question of why a potential client would use your business. Or, what is the same, how should that product or service be useful for the user and, above all, how to satisfy it better than the competition. In this sense, the global market is a real challenge in this respect, and often requires adaptations.
Step #3. Study the market and target customers
You must study the market to determine the characteristics of the target customer to know it in detail. Only then can you get an idea of potential sales.
Step #4. Identify competitors
Identify and study them in depth and assert our competitive advantage based on the expected response from them. This aspect can be more complex when an external analysis is required.
Step #5. Summarize the final objective with a single sentence
The positioning statement for the target customers, which symbolizes for the clients and which constitutes the competitive advantage should be able to be summarized in a few words. How we are going to satisfy the customer’s needs better than the competition.
In addition to this basic structure and tips, companies need to have a good knowledge of their financial situation and the possibility of taking on expenses, as well as the preparation of human resources to face the challenge. And, of course, the plan will include an international approach if it operates in the global sphere or is intended to initiate an expansion on other markets.