Fill and Sign the Marketing Plan Outline Form

Marketing Plan Outline There are a variety of styles and formats used for marketing plans. The following section headings will help you organize your plan. The content of the plan is much more important than rigid adherence to a specific format. 1. Executive Summary The Executive Summary highlights the main goals and recommendations of the marketing plan. It should also briefly address budget requirements and how success will be measured. 2. Business Overview This section is sometime referred to as the Situation Analysis segment. In a typical marketing plan, it contains relevant background on the market, product, pricing, and distribution situations as well as on competitors. Assuming the planning process takes place at the end of a fiscal year, this section may be a recap of the business for the past 12 months. Consider describing your customer base, services required by your customers, and environmental factors affecting your operation. How has the Internet affected your business? Are other departments loading content for their use? Include any hard or anecdotal data on return on investment (ROI) available to you. Some marketing plan templates include the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis in this segment. Others insert a separate segment devoted to the SWOT Analysis. 3. Target Market How well do you know your target market? How well do you understand their information needs? Can you articulate what your customers and potential customers need as opposed to what you offer? Are there groups to whom you should be “selling” who are not now “buying” your services? Are there ways to segment your market so that you can offer highly specialized products and services to various groups, reflecting their business priorities? What kind of products should be offered to a broad base of users? Answering these questions will help you define your target market. 4. Goals What do you want to achieve? The goal statement(s) should be challenging and yet, attainable. Is it important to increase the number of departments served? Which departments? Do you intend to provide more training programs? 5. Marketing Strategies Here strategies and programs are outlined which will help us reach the goals outlined above. 4 6. Implementation Tactics Tasks required to implement and monitor each strategy are listed in this section. With each task, the person responsible for the task, and a completion target date are indicated. Having a plan of action with specific tasks ensures that the details are clear and that specific persons are accountable. How much will the activities defined above cost? Can you provide a revenue forecast? Explain the assumptions on which the forecast is based and consider various (best case, worst case) scenarios. 7. Evaluation of Results What are the success criteria? How will you measure success of the plan? By monitoring progress, you can judge the success of the marketing plan. If some of the strategies are not working out, try to determine why. Is the strategy flawed? Is there a problem with implementation or timing? How can you refocus and move on? 5