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perhaps the most vital aspect of any business is the marketing function a business can't really get off the ground until it sells something a marketing plan provides a roadmap for running and coordinating marketing programs it helps align the many people and organizations involved in commercializing your products and services a formal written marketing plan is a great way to document the planning process it serves many purposes but a marketing plan doesn't have to be a long and formal document even a simple one that answers these three questions will help where are we now where are we going and how do we get there first it captures all the things you and your team have learned about the market the competition and your customers this information is critical because it becomes the supporting evidence for the strategies that you and your team decide to pursue second the plan serves as a tool to help you align the organization marketing involves many people so you'll need to get everyone on board and going in the same direction the written plan becomes a source document to create presentations to conduct training and to give directions to external partners believe me you'll use it a lot finally the written plan lays out a coherent and coordinated set of marketing programs with schedules in budgets so you can run a smooth operation to write the plan don't wait until the very end of the planning process I like to start writing it right from the very beginning here's a tip that makes it easy create a blank PowerPoint presentation with just the headings of each component on a separate page and keep it with you during team meetings as you collect information or make key decisions write or type it into the appropriate slide that helps you keep the document up to date as you move through the process when you have enough written material go ahead and create a first draft but be sure to date the draft as you'll be making regular updates and revisions a written marketing plan is I die Namek document and you should expect to make changes to it as conditions in the market change if you create a great plan and update it regularly it'll help you stay ahead of the competition you there are five steps to writing a marketing plan step one is to analyze the market this is where you explore important issues about market conditions your potential customers and the competition this part of your plan is called the situation analysis once you've analyzed the market you need to describe your strategy for achieving success here you lay out your approach to segmenting the market targeting specific customers and how you will position your products and services in the marketplace next is the tactical section which includes your product or service programs your pricing approach your promotion in marketing communications programs and your channel design these are often called the four PS of your marketing plan a good marketing plan explains how you will implement the various tactics described in the last step it's here where you describe what steps you need to take when those steps will happen and who's responsible for getting the job done and finally is the financial section of your plan you need to describe a budget that outlines the financial and other resources needed to implement your marketing plan here you also lay out your forecasts of what you expect in terms of future revenues or other business goals this section of the plan may also describe how you will measure success you can start the marketing planning process any time but an important consideration is how and when your company does its annual business planning process that's where the company develops financial forecasts investments budgets and so on generally speaking there are two ways to connect the marketing planning with business planning some companies start the marketing planning process first right around the middle of the fiscal year each marketing team develops their own sales revenue forecasts for their assigned products they also develop a budget to spend on marketing programs that they think are needed to achieve those revenue forecasts those forecasts and budgets are combined into a company level revenue forecast and budget and that's fed directly into the annual business planning process but some companies do just the opposite they start with the business planning process where they develop an overall revenue goal and spending target those are divided and given to the individual marketing teams those teams now have to take those targets and develop the best marketing plan they can to achieve those goals so talk to your finance partner to find out which approach your company uses another good idea is to create a calendar of when you'll write each section of the plan a good marketer is disciplined and doesn't cut corners in writing a marketing plan it takes time and lots of work but in the end it's worth it good marketers know the value of a diverse and talented team of colleagues to help write their marketing plan you'll need to draw on their expertise their market knowledge possibly there are resources and their network your team will include colleagues inside the company as well as external partners like advertising and promotional firms let's review the various roles of your cross-functional team first is finance your finance department plays a very important role in making sure you have sufficient budget dollars to execute your plan finance partners will also help you measure the results of your marketing efforts and help you find ways to improve it in the next business cycle finance partners have a good eye for whether a recommendation in your marketing plan makes sense financially marketing research is another key role you'll need on your team your company might have a separate marketing research department or it may outsource it but either way you'll need their help understanding customer needs testing new product concepts or perhaps testing a new advertising message your marketing plan needs to explain what you know about the market so make sure you involve your colleagues in marketing research next is your technical team these are the people who develop your products and services they might be engineers or scientists in an R&D department or perhaps software developers it depends on the nature of your business you'll need their input to your marketing plan so you can explain what new products might be coming down the pipeline now most companies have a sales function and you should enlist their help in developing a marketing plan after all they're on the frontline day-to-day and they have a lot of insights about your customers and your competition they'll also have ideas about the selling tools they need to succeed be sure to get their input depending on your business you may also want to involve colleagues from manufacturing or operations these are the people who make the products or liver a service a good customer support team for example might have great insights about customer complaints or service issues external partners might include your advertising agency your branding company a public relations firm and perhaps a marketing consultant they're there to help you succeed so make them a part of the team from the very start once you've identified the key players on your team make sure they're aware of the schedule you've created if the team members know their role and understand your expectations you can count on them to help you write a great marketing plan you before you venture out into the marketplace with your products and services you've got to have a realistic understanding of where you are today after all you don't want to pick a fight with your competition until you know what you've got to fight with this part of the plan is called the situation analysis there are four parts to it first is the market analysis analyzing a market means estimating how many potential customers you might be able to sell your products and services to when analyzing any market you want to group customers into three types first are the customers that already buy from you today second are customers that buy the same products and services you offer but from a competitor and third are potential customers that might be interested in your type of products and services but not buying from anybody now estimate the potential number of customers that you might be able to capture for each of the three groups you do this so you can decide where you want to concentrate your marketing strategy in marketing it's the old adage fish where the fish are next you want to analyze how your company compares to your competition a good tool for this is called the competitive matrix to create a matrix list your company and your competitors across the top then down the side list the things that you want to compare things like size market share strengths and weaknesses and especially the key strategy elements like the value propositions what does each company have in terms of key resources and how do they use those resources to acquire and retain customers now let's look at your customers customers buy things for a variety of reasons but some are more important than others if you know what's most important to them you can appeal to that need when trying to get them to buy or you can try to raise the sense of importance they place on another factor you also need to measure how they rate your product versus others and how it delivers each benefit they may have misperceptions that you need to change you may be able to emphasize a key feature of your product that is better than your competition this analysis will be critical later when you begin segmenting customers to complete the situation analysis you need to test the features of your product and services compared to the same features on your competitors you need to determine which features perform better than the competition which perform the same and which perform not as well when you complete the analysis take a close look are there features that need to be improved are there certain competitors you want to avoid or possibly go after based on product performance now keep in mind that the data and information that you put into the situation analysis it doesn't have to be perfectly accurate it just needs to be realistic that allows you to step back and see what customers to go after what to emphasize when marketing to them and what competitor is to go after or avoid the situation analysis is an important step so you want to take your time here a good technique is to leverage the team you created to write the plan I suggest you break the situation analysis into the various sections and assign the writing of each section to the team member most qualified to do it having a good understanding of your situation can go a long way to setting you up for success as you write your marketing plan the heart of any marketing plan is your strategy this is where you describe how you plan to win in the marketplace the strategy section has three parts first is segmentation where you break your customers into homogeneous groups this helps you be efficient with your marketing resources by focusing only on the most relevant customers there are four ways to segment customers demographic is where you group customers by their characteristics such as income level age gender or their height and weight it's useful for certain products or services that deliver a benefit specifically tied to that characteristic if you're marketing a shampoo for redheads for example then you'd want to group customers by hair color geographic segmentation groups customers by where they are physically knowing where your customers are helps you know where to place stores for example and where to communicate or sell to them behavioral segmentation is grouping customers by the things they do it can be things such as who they purchased from now how frequently they purchase or their price sensitivity finally is psychographic segmentation which is how customers think their attitudes about the benefits they seek in a product an example of psychographic benefit would be the need for prestige or need for convenience segmenting this way tends to be very powerful in targeting you make decisions on which specific segments to go after it's a process of narrowing down your audience to a selected group let's go back to our shampoo example using all four types of segmentation you might have a target audience like this women over 40 with red hair who live in certain metropolitan areas who buy shampoo once a month and who seek the benefit of natural looking hair color now you have a specific identifiable group of customers for the next step called positioning positioning is determining how you want your customers to think about your products versus the competition so they're more likely to buy yours it may seem a little abstract but positioning happens up here in the mind of the consumer think of the consumers mind is a three-dimensional space and in that space they form beliefs about products and services in a particular category and you can change those beliefs so they have a favorable opinion of your product you do that by making a claim and by supporting that claim with credible reasons to believe or RT B's as we call them the claim becomes your positioning statement what you'll say to customers when you communicate to them about buying your product let's use our shampoo example a positioning statement might look like this for women over 40 with red hair that want to look their best our shampoo gives you a more natural looking color to your hair than our competitors shampoo now to support this positioning claim you might include photographs of customers who have used the product and perhaps some testimonials of how much they liked it notice how I included my target audience in the positioning statement as well as the primary benefit that they want and that our shampoo can deliver so what benefit should you emphasize go back to your situation analysis this is where you compared your product to the competition to find out what benefit you deliver better than they do when you position your offering around your strengths you'll get an important edge over the competition and that's what great marketing is all about a great marketing strategy only comes to life when you take action now it's time to dive in and write the tactical section of your marketing plan this is where you describe in detail your product or service programs your pricing approach your promotion and marketing communications programs and your channel design in marketing we call these the four PS by product and service programs these refer to all of the aspects of how products and services perform their job in delivering benefits it includes things like the design of the product how it feels to use it the packaging of the product and the people and processes involved in dealing with customers now be sure to describe the entire customer buying experience which typically includes the following steps first is the need recognition phase this is where customers realize they want something the next step is information search where they gather information from a wide variety of sources now this is a critical step because this is when a customer is most receptive to your message once a customer gathers information they evaluate the alternatives based on what features are most important and which product does the best job in delivering those features eventually they go to the purchase phase where they actually buy the product now you might think that the buying process ends here with the final purchase but there's one last step called the post purchase behavior phase once customers start using the product they compare the results with their expectations pricing involves two things setting the actual price that customers will pay and communicating those prices in an effective way the price of your product or service implies their value that the consumer should expect from buying it and using it your written plan should list the prices you intend to charge and why they're set at that level describe where and when prices will be communicated to the customer this might be a simple price sticker on your packaging or you might have prices on your website from Oshin includes all the things you say outside of the company to the market this is where you broadcast the value proposition and other information about the product it includes advertising in-store promotions email campaigns perhaps social media and sales promotion your written plan should outline the specific programs in terms of where and when you'll promote your products and finally distribution these are the programs that create an effective pathway to get the product from the factory into the customers hands somebody has to take the product ship it store it place it on the shelves sell it and possibly service it once the sale is made including your written plan the specific details of where customers can buy your products which might include store locations online distributors and so on to be an effective marketing plan all four P's have to work together to convey the value proposition no one of the four PS can carry the load a good marketer uses all the tactical tools available to make the biggest impact possible once you're confident you have a thorough comprehensive marketing plan for your business you need to take steps to implement the actions outlined in the plan here are the specific factors you should address first is how and when you'll communicate details about the plan make a list of specific audiences or individuals that need to hear about it then write in the schedule with exact dates and locations for these presentations next are the marketing programs that you created in your tactical section for each program I like to use a simple framework that describes who what when where and how this section should describe who is responsible for the program it should show the timeline they have to complete the program including when implementation starts and when it finishes you should also explain where the implementation actions occur and maybe some details on how your team will implement that program finally you want to set up key performance indicators or KPIs for short key performance indicators help you keep track of your overall strategy and your individual marketing programs they alert you when it's time to intervene and take action to get things back on track without KPIs you're flying blind so to speak and you run the risk of falling short of your overall goal now to be most effective each KPI should be quantifiable and measurable you can have as many as you want but don't measure a KPI just because you have the data if you're not going to use it don't bother it's a waste of time measure something only if you plan to take action from it that's why I like to set thresholds around each one each KPI should have a target of what you expect to happen plus a high and low number around that target for those thresholds you and your planning team should agree in advance what action you'll take if those thresholds are exceeded here's an example assume you create a KPI about the number of new customers acquired each month you set your target at 500 and you also specify a high and low threshold of 600 and 400 respectively if your actual customers per month is more than 600 you might consider taking an action such as reducing advertising spending or in the low end if you're below 400 you could consider increasing sales incentives good marketers not only reach their marketing goals but they also know whether those goals were achieved the way they expected them to be achieved they also take immediate action when they detect something is going in the wrong direction a well-written marketing plan will help your team do just that Marketing takes time and money so it's important that you develop a budget in a forecast of what you expect in terms of business results let's look at each of these a good budget helps you allocate the right amount of resources to the right marketing programs to make the most impact now there are two ways to develop a budget you can decide on how much you have to spend in total and then allocate it some companies do this by taking a percentage of sales revenue as the total budget for marketing that amount then is assigned to different teams and programs I call this the top-down approach the other approach is from the bottom up each marketing team develops a budget to spend on marketing programs that they think are needed to achieve a revenue forecast and then those budgets are combined into a company level budget if you recruited a finance member to your marketing planning team they'll be able to tell you what approach your company uses whichever approach you take you still need to decide where to spend the money and how much to spend how much you spend depends on a number of factors look at each of your tactical programs the four P's product price promotion and place estimate the required spending in each one for example do you need to spend money to upgrade your product or its packaging how much do you need to spend on marketing communications to reach a sufficient number of people and still achieve the communications objective what are your sales people and distributors need to do their jobs effectively next is your forecast or what you expect to achieve as a result of implementing your marketing plan now you can set any type of goal whether it be a revenue forecast perhaps units sold or maybe new customers acquired and so on for a marketing goal to be the most effective it should meet the following criteria first it should be specific just saying that your goal is to increase market share that wouldn't be specific enough increasing market share from 15% to 17% is much better as a goal because it's specific second the goal should be setting a goal that can't be measured will become frustrating for you and the team especially when you try to gauge your progress in reaching it next the goal must be attainable setting an unrealistically high goal won't do you any good in fact it could hurt your campaign by causing you to spend more marketing dollars than is warranted the fourth criteria is relevant that means the goal is directly related to your marketing strategy and finally the goal must be time bound meaning that the goal will be achieved during a specific period of time a year or perhaps a quarter or even monthly once you've estimated what each program will cost you'll probably need to make some tough choices and this is a great time to use the talents of your marketing planning team let them help you decide in my experience a team decisions ends up being better than any single individual decision after all you're in this together so put them to work in helping you develop the most effective budgets and forecasts possible an effective marketing plan is one that lays out a coordinated set of strategies and tactics to win in the marketplace at some point in the process you'll need to gain support for that plan and perhaps the most important audience is your senior management they're the ones who allocate financial and human resources to various projects in your company without their full support you may end up not getting what you need here are some tips on how to make a big impact with senior leaders when presenting your marketing plan first try to lead with the story perhaps focus on a customer who had a great result using the product this is a really good way to remind people how your products bring value to customers next share what's changed in the marketplace what new threats or new products or perhaps trends are out there that are creating a challenge for you we call this creating the burning platform you want people to understand the difficult situation you're up against then share the process you went through to create the marketing plan give credit to your team members it builds your credibility when you've collaborated with a cross-functional team now be as brief as possible because you probably won't have a lot of time you should be prepared with different length presentations for example you should have a 10 minute version a 30 minute version and a 1 hour version really savvy marketers also know how to present their strategy in 30 seconds or less the so called elevator speech afterall it's all about getting people on board now you don't have to share every detail about your plan just the highlights present the market conditions the competitive situation and your strategy in terms of who you're targeting and how your positioning approach will convert customers be completely upfront about the weaknesses or risks with your plan you gain trust when you're upfront and honest about potential issues then share your forecasted revenue and budget needs make sure they completely understand your assumptions take your time here if you see that someone has a different view around the assumptions clarify it on the spot not aligning around the assumptions can create real problems for you later remind them that funding your marketing plan is an investment not a cost assure them that you're committed to getting them a good ROI return on investment given their experience be sure to ask them for feedback on ways to improve your plan finish the presentation by asking them for their support it's the old sales adage always ask for the order you're there to get approval so look them straight in the eye and ask for it hey you've invested a lot of time to write a great marketing plan so now it's time to gain support from senior managers great marketers show passion and enthusiasm for the products and services they manage to do just that your retina ting plan is a great tool to help educate some very important audiences if you created a cross-functional team to help you write the plan those team members can help spread the word but there are two other audiences that may need special attention first is your sales force they'll need to understand your marketing plan because they play a key role implementing it the first thing they need to know is your strategy especially your value proposition they should know who the target market is and they should know where and how to find them share your customer analysis with them what buying factors are most important to the target audience once they understand your strategy give them the tactical tools they need to sell the product first they need to understand how the product works and how it compares feature by feature to the competitor's product next you should share your pricing strategy in how prices are communicated explain how the price was determined in relation to the value delivered now you might get some resistance here because salespeople generally like the prices to be low that's why it's essential they understand how pricing supports the overall positioning finally share any selling tools you've created to make their job easier these could include product brochures or tools to demonstrate the product you might even have a suggested selling script for them to use the second key audience is your internal or external marketing communications agencies now your marketing plan has all the information to create a creative brief it's a short overview of a creative assignment it answers key questions like what needs to be created how it'll be used what are the deliverables for the project and when are the deadlines it's like a contract whatever format you use it should include the following first give an overview of your situation analysis next describe the objective of the creative piece is it a commercial a sales brochure a website and so on then describe the target audience who are we to the more precise and detailed you can be the better next outline your value proposition and the reasons to believe or are tb's what are the supporting rationale and emotional reasons to believe and by the agency may use these points in the creative piece complete your creative brief with the schedule and a budget for the project but keep in mind that the creative brief should be brief don't just hand the agency your marketing plan and expect them to sort through it a creative brief is much more detailed than your plan but very focused on just one specific marketing program in that plan with the proper guidance from our well-written marketing plan your support teams will work better together to achieve your business goals you