14 Aug 09 Elements of a Marketing Plan

As a marketer, you have this pressing desire to maximize the reach of your product. The hope is to penetrate the internet market as deep as you can, but before you can truly accomplish this step it is necessary to analyze and attain solid marketing goals. Once you define the objective the race begins to achieve a successful business strategy!

This process begins with writing down a detailed plan of action. In the business world, this action is called a marketing plan. A comprehensive plan consists of different factors intended to positively affect the outcome of your business and organizational goals. A typical marketing plan should include the following items:

• Target Market: Who is going to purchase and/or use the product you are offering? We describe the target market in terms of demographic, psychographic and behavioral factors, such as:
  1. Age
  2. Sex
  3. Location
  4. Profession
  5. Income
  6. Education
  7. How they think
  8. Values
  9. Cast, creed and ethnicity
  10. Attitude, etc.

• Product and services: Under this heading you will write attributes and benefits of products and services you are offering.
  1. Nature of product
  2. The problem it solves (benefits)
  3. Feature of products (attributes)
  4. What set your product apart from other offerings in the market (USP)

• Demand forecasting and pricing

• Marketing goal: What you want to achieve
  1. What you want your customers to do.
  2. What kind of change in behavior you expect in your customers?
  3. Do you wish to increase consumption of your product or your wish is to maximize the reach?

• Budget: How much do you want to spend on this
  1. What is yearly budget for marketing activities?
  2. What is quarterly budget for the same?
  3. What is monthly break-down of the quarterly budget?

• Sales Target: how many SKU (stock keeping unit) you want to sell.
  1. What is sales target for a year?
  2. What is quarterly sales target?
  3. How much do you want to sell in one month?

• Profit target: How much profit you want to generate?
  1. Your yearly profit goal.
  2. How much profit do you want to make in each quarter?
  3. Monthly profit goal.

• Marketing Strategies: Write each of the strategies that you will adopt to reach the target.

• Communication goal: What is your marketing communication goal?

• Marketing Message: What you want to communicate?

• Marketing vehicles: how will you communicate
  1. Press releases,
  2. Advertorials
  3. Print, television, radio, or online advertising
  4. Public relation
  5. Brochures/flyers
  6. Business directories listing

• Marketing Environment analysis: You scan the marketing environment and analyze each factor that can affect the result. Do PESTEL (Political, Economical, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal) analysis.

• Completion analysis
  1. Who are your direct competitors?
  2. Who are your indirect competitors?
  3. What are their strengths and weaknesses?
  4. Where is the opportunity?
  5. What activates your competitors is undertaking?
  6. Analyze the major competitor’s products.
  7. How similar of different your product is from your competitors?

• Risk Analysis: You also need to assess the risks that the market presents. You can use SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat) for the purpose.

• Collect data

• Tracking and Evaluate: In marketing, if you can’t measure the result, you have not achieved it. You need to track and review the effectiveness of the factors you have employed, and tweak as necessary.

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