How To Make a Marketing Plan
A marketing plan is vital to having a successful business. We often see business owners that spend so much time on creating a fantastic business or product but then are completely and utterly unable to drive sales due to a lack of marketing. As they observe this lack of marketing, they then panic and began to make knee jerk decisions on marketing. This leads to gut reaction spending and eventually wastes a lot of money and causes a lot of stress. The simplest way to overcome the slippery slope of spending is to create or have someone create for you the marketing plan.
Plan the work, work the plan. A very famous quote that is very useful in the marketing field. This does raise the question of: how do you make a marketing plan?
To begin, you are going to want to identify what exactly it is that you are selling. In this sense we don’t mean the actual product or service but rather the promise of a better tomorrow that is at the true heart of all marketing. Be harsh in examining what it is you want to market and be specific. If you are successful on a specific goal, then you can easily scale your marketing to make other goals.
Once you have your good or service, then you need to identify exactly who your target demographic is. Again, be very specific. Look at things such as location, age, gender, likes, habits and education. The more specific you are about to whom you want to market, the more accurate this is; the better you will do in marketing. Even go so far as to create a made-up person that is your demographic, give them a job, a family, hobbies, etc. and if at any point in your marketing venture you hit a road block, you can refer back to this avatar.
When your demographic has been locked, you then must determine where and how to reach them. This will often be based off of the demographic and location as well as the scope of your business. Once this is determined, determine your budget and see if reaching your target audience through these means is feasible. If it is not, then return to your marketing channels and find another means to reach the demographic.
With your channels in place, you will then want to create your advertisement. Refer back to your avatar frequently and determine if that person would express interest in the ad you are creating. Does the copy appeal to their voice? Are the graphics in their aesthetic? Is your call to action something that they would actually do?
Finally, you commit and execute the plan and take data and information throughout. If you are not successful, go back through the process and see where you fell short. Was it in the copy writing? Did you not identify you demographic correctly? Was your marketing channel not optimal for your audience? Find the flaw, fix it. and then attempt the ad again.
All of this is the best way to create and execute a marketing plan in the broadest sense of the term. Good luck!
