If your company isn’t already creating an annual marketing plan or if your current marketing plan hasn’t been effective, it’s time to work on creating an effective marketing plan. A marketing plan outlines an organization’s business goals, strategies, and budget. A comprehensive marketing plan creates a roadmap for the coming year, whether your target audience falls under B2B or B2C.
Business Summary
A business summary is an important part of every marketing plan. It summarizes important information about your company such as where your headquarters is located and how many other locations you have. Include your mission statement and the names of your marketing leaders. A business summary gives detailed information about your company so that stakeholders can easily learn important points about your business.
Analysis of Strengths and Weaknesses
To determine where you want to go from here, you need to gather information about the strengths and weaknesses of your company along with opportunities and threats to your marketing strategy. This is known as a SWOT Analysis. Opportunities include things that make your company unique while threats examine who or what might hold your business back from meeting its goals.
Target Market
Include detailed information about your target market. If you’re a B2B company, summarize what industries you intend to target. If you’re targeting consumers, describe your buyer persona, which is a fictional person who has the characteristics of your ideal customer. Include the age group, location and pain points. You may want to specify other details such as gender, marital status and income level.
Analysis of Competitors
A competitive analysis should be part of your marketing plan. Your target audience has choices. To get a clearer picture of why they should choose you, do some research on your competitors. Who are your competitors? What products or services do they offer that compete with what you offer? Consider the pricing, market share and positioning of your closest competitors. Market research and competitor analysis will take time but will give you valuable information.
Marketing Strategy
With the information you have put together so far, you have a clearer idea of how to approach the market. What will you offer that solves some of the problems your audience faces? What will you charge and is it reasonable and competitive? Your marketing plan should include information on how you’ll promote your business, such as how often you’ll post on your blog or social media and what social media platforms are most likely to be beneficial to you.
Marketing Budget
Set a marketing budget and include information on what marketing expenses you expect in the coming year. This may include industry events, paid promotions, marketing software or outsourcing some of your marketing tasks. Itemizing this information helps you to have financial projections. These projections may not be totally accurate, but they give you a clearer idea what you’re aiming for. During the year, you’ll analyze results and make changes as needed.
Softline Solutions has helped hundreds of companies to succeed online and we’re experts at helping businesses grow and thrive. Reach out to Softline Solutions today to find out more about how we can help you grow your online presence.
