A company's marketing plan is a plan that outlines its overall marketing strategy for the coming year. It must indicate for whom you are positioning your products, how you will sell them to the target category of buyers, what techniques you will use to attract new customers and increase sales. The purpose of writing a marketing plan is to outline in detail how to market your products and services to your target market.
Steps
Part 1
Conducting a situational analysis- For example, your company performs snow removal and other related winter work. You have set yourself a goal of increasing revenue by 10% by concluding new contracts. Do you have a marketing plan that describes how you can attract additional business? If there is a plan, is it effective?
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Examine your current marketing strengths and weaknesses. How is your company currently attractive to customers? What makes competing companies attractive to customers? It is very likely that your strengths are what attract buyers to you. Knowing your strengths gives you an important marketing advantage.
Gather information about external opportunities and threats to your company. They will be external characteristics of the company, depending on competition, fluctuations in market factors, as well as clients and customers. The goal is to identify various factors that can impact business. This will allow you to adjust your marketing plan accordingly later.
Assign responsible persons. When preparing a marketing plan, you will need to assign people responsible for specific aspects of promoting your company in the market. Consider which employees would be best suited to perform specific marketing functions and determine their responsibilities. You will also need to consider a system for assessing the success of these job responsibilities.
State your marketing goals. What do you want to achieve with your marketing plan? Do you see ultimate goal expanding your customer base, informing existing customers about new services and quality improvements, expanding into other regions or demographic groups, or something completely different? It is your goals that will form the basis for preparing the plan.
Develop marketing strategies to achieve your goals. Once you clearly define your marketing goals and vision, you'll need to come up with specific actions to achieve them. There are many various types marketing strategies, but the most common ones are listed below.
Approve the budget. You may have big ideas for promoting your business and expanding your customer base, but with a limited budget, you may have to rethink some of your strategy. The budget should be realistic and reflect both the current state of the business and its potential future growth.
Think about the goals of your company. The purpose of a situational analysis is to understand the current marketing situation facing your company. Based on this understanding, you can think through and implement the necessary changes in business. Start by looking at your company's mission and goals (if your company doesn't already have these, these should be defined first) and see if your current marketing plan is helping you achieve those goals.
Part 4
Preparing a Marketing Plan- Know that a prepared marketing plan is extremely useful to give to both direct employees of your company and its consultants for review.
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Describe your target market. The second section of the marketing plan will address the research you have conducted and describe the company's target market. The text should not be written complex language, indicating simple key points will suffice. You can start by describing the demographics of your market (including age, gender, location, and industry, if applicable) and then move on to highlighting your customers' key preferences for your product or service.
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List your goals. This section should not take more than one page of text. It must indicate the company's marketing goals for the coming year. Remember that the goals you set must satisfy five qualities: be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.
- Be objective when reviewing your marketing plan annually. If something isn't working or someone in charge isn't acting in the best interests of the company, you can openly discuss the problems and failure to perform job responsibilities with staff. If things go really badly, you may have to prepare an entirely different marketing plan. This is where it can be helpful to hire an outside consultant to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your old marketing plan and restructure it in the right direction.
Start with explanatory note. This section of the marketing plan should include basic information about your product or service, as well as briefly describe the overall content of the entire document in one or two paragraphs of text. The primary preparation of an explanatory note will allow you to subsequently expand and describe in more detail individual points in the main text of the document.
- Be sure to include needs and ideas for every department in your company (and even employee, if appropriate) in your marketing plan. It is also very important that the marketing plan is related and well integrated with the company's business plan and mission, public image and core values.
- Include in your marketing plan any tables, graphs, etc. that you needed to create while gathering important information. It will also be helpful to include tables that explain key points in your plan.
Warnings
- It is necessary to review the marketing plan at least once a year to check the success of the strategies used and to rework those components of the plan that were unsuccessful.
- Many are critical important factors marketing plan are dynamic. As they change over time, the marketing plan needs to be revised.
The vast majority of Russian marketers were brought up on Kotler’s books. His contribution to the popularization of marketing is, of course, invaluable. But, perhaps, it is in this role that he will remain in history.
American authors Hiebing and Cooper, known throughout the world for their books on marketing planning, focused much more on the practical side. Their main contribution was step-by-step marketing planning based on establishing quantitative relationship between sales volumes and marketing communications. It is no coincidence that thousands of students study from their books in all US business schools.
Another American author, Schultz, made a major contribution to the development integrated marketing communications (IMC),- a system based on objectively proven scientific fact that the consumer integrates all information about the market for a particular product that comes to him from various sources. Therefore, the presence of several communication channels greatly increases the impact on the consumer. On the other hand, when information coming from one source is not supported by similar information from others, its effect is equally greatly reduced.
The combination of these two techniques, namely prudent transformation of IMC into real sales, is the key and most effective idea in modern marketing. Against the background of “emotional-propaganda” books by foreign and domestic authors, this is certainly the most rational and practical useful technique for businessmen and marketers.
Are there practically no examples in the open press and the Internet of how this works? Mostly found common words and academic plans. Therefore, it will be especially useful for you to become familiar with our practice.
In the practice of Russian and many foreign companies, marketing and sales plans exist separately and have little connection with each other. You will find many similar plans online, which are more reminiscent of bureaucratic circulars, consisting of cumbersome paragraphs copied from textbooks and many unnecessary terms and definitions. The most important thing is not there - any plan must produce results. Therefore, we will not be talking about a plan “for the sake of a plan” and not about a teaching case. We're talking about a marketing plan that can actually increase sales.
It should also be remembered that the marketing plan is a key part of the investment plan. Not production or financial, which many people focus on, but marketing! The marketing component is the weakest point of investment strategies and plans. A sales plan cannot be credible without a compelling marketing rationale. This must always be remembered.
In practice, it is indeed very difficult to connect sales and marketing plans with each other. It’s easier to make formal plans or “unsubscribes”, which serve as a “whip” for managers and do not help them in their work.
In reality, this is a rather cumbersome and labor-intensive design if presented in schematic or tabular form. In addition, it is very difficult to fit into a visual model of a marketing and sales plan numerous preliminary and intermediate studies and chains of inferences that affect the content and indicators. But one thing sets her apart:
At any point in time, you understand why sales are growing or falling and what and what intensity of actions need to be taken to maintain, accelerate or slow down (if you want) these sales by the desired amount.
We took the least voluminous marketing and sales plan for the Moscow representative office of a small electrical manufacturer household appliances from neighboring countries, which recently entered the Russian market. Based on the results of the analysis of the market and product portfolio, it was planned to double the current sales volumes without taking into account online sales, which at that time had not yet made a significant contribution and were not so actively practiced. Although the products belong to a variety of goods that, despite the influence of the Internet, remain committed to traditional distribution channels. Therefore, the relevance of the project remains quite high.
By the time the project began, the customer had a small Moscow representative office in Russia of 5 people, sales of several hundred units of household appliances per month, and the only “urgent” question for him was in which publication to place an advertisement that would solve all the problems with sales?
We proposed a research stage, based on the results of which this marketing plan was drawn up and began to be implemented, which is presented in full schematic volume below:
Complete outline of your marketing and sales plan
It is important to clarify the following points:
1. Target markets
At the start of the project, the target markets with which the company worked were limited to the customer groups noted orange. After conducting market analysis and segmentation, other target customer groups were identified and noted green. In the process of field research, their main characteristics were identified - price segments, decision-making systems and decision makers, basic needs and wishes, dynamics and trends in recent years.
Target markets
Source: Analytical Marketing Agency
2. Positioning
This is the weakest point absolute majority Russian companies. Because they underestimate the simple but painstaking procedure for developing this provision. In most cases, it is enough to approach this carefully to get quick and noticeable results. IN in this case the product portfolio was analyzed and product positioning was developed, which was then adapted with minor variations to different target markets. This is an important point! Different target markets require specific positioning, even if at first glance it may not be fundamentally different.
In our case, we tested the new positioning in the form commercial offer for small samples of clients. Its results were assessed according to the system awareness - share of positive attitude - making a purchasing decision (concluding a contract).
3. Communication goals
The 4A model of consumer behavior, known in Western literature, stands for the sequence of communications with the consumer Awareness - Attitude - Action - Action Again (Awareness - Attitude - First/trial purchase - Repeat purchase). In Russian-language literature one can find similar analogues of AIDA/AIDAS from the field of advertising, but we prefer to measure the specific “Attitude” of the consumer rather than the abstract “Interest”. The main thing is that you must learn to give it quality characteristics quantitative measurement to understand the most effective direction of your communications. If, for example, you reach 100% of the target group with communications, 25% have a positive attitude, 5% make a purchase, half of whom make a repeat purchase, then by distributing this data to a wider audience of consumers with similar characteristics, you can calculate the potential the effect of your communications. In order to get these numbers, you need local samples. And your permanent task as a marketer or business owner is to constantly try to reduce the ranges between these indicators. For example, instead of 100% - 25% - 5% - 2.5%, achieve 100% - 30% - 10% - 7% at the first stage. This is the meaning of the quantitative connection between marketing communications and sales in the general case. But this is just one of the rough (but visual!) options for interpreting this relationship and it has its drawbacks. Most often, you have to select more subtle practical tools for each specific case.
Positioning is just one of these, although it is the most powerful tool for achieving these results. We will talk about this in detail in special articles.
4. Identification of leading and secondary target markets.
The most promising target markets were identified as green color in the topic "Marketing Goals". “Specialized retail chains” were not previously considered by the customer due to the difficulty of getting into them. This problem was resolved by consultants during testing. We managed to come to an agreement with the large M-Video network to place products there in the ideal price segment, which turned out to be unfilled with competitive analogues, which attracted the attention of purchasing decision makers. Thanks to a reasoned proposal, it was possible to obtain their consent almost immediately.
By the way, at the first telephone conversation the head of the purchasing department was invited to familiarize himself free of charge with the results of marketing research on the electric kettle market in Russia and Moscow, in particular, which showed a gap in the price range of the retail chain. During the second phone call, the retail chain manager immediately agreed to a meeting that lasted no more than 10 minutes with the result indicated above. Model 4A in this case looked like 100% (awareness) - 15% (positive attitude) - 7.5% (trial purchase). The positive attitude was expressed in the fact that in addition to the main one, another small network of 13 covered, having familiarized itself with the offer and positioning of the products, was ready to carry out a trial purchase a little later.
Wholesale companies that previously refused to work with the company's products were able to evoke a loyal attitude with the new positioning of the products and encourage some of them to make trial purchases. According to the 4A 100% - 29% -14% model, this allowed us to double the base of wholesale buyers - from 7 to 15.
In fact, the consultants worked in the above examples as a sales department. In view of small quantity customers in the collected databases, instead of limited samples, these target markets were targeted in in full. A high degree of efficiency was achieved through precise positioning, which was adjusted after each contact until the share of positive attitudes increased. If at the beginning of the work it did not exceed 10%, then at the end it reached 29%.
All contacts were transferred to sales managers to work out details and conclude contracts. And this main feature in our work, unlike classical consultants. We do not offer solutions that have not been tested with real markets and customers.
Yellow Target markets or customer groups recognized as secondary are highlighted in color in the “Marketing Goals” section.
Marketing Goals
Source: Analytical Marketing Agency
5. Secondary target markets are secondary in order to limit them in human and financial resources compared to priority ones.
You can’t embrace the immensity, or, as we prefer to put it, you can’t do a little of everything! Unfortunately, the reality is that no manager or entrepreneur ever follows this principle. More often than not, they do the exact opposite and consider it a good thing. Because of this, we have to constantly check the compliance of client decisions with this principle.
"Yellow" target customer groups were found to be of secondary importance in testing. They exhibited certain difficulties, which were reflected in low shares of positive attitude and potential sales relative to awareness. These were problems associated with identifying and reaching decision makers, conveying important information to them information about the company and products, with forecasting the level of average purchases and sales in general, price pressure (market traders working with cheap Chinese products), with some seasonality in purchases, with the difficulty of ranking marketing and communications tools, etc.
All this generally increased the costs of promotion in these target markets. Therefore, in accordance with the “golden rule” of business - "don't do a little of everything"- it was decided to limit activity in relation to them at this stage and the main task of communications was their primary awareness of the positioning of the company and products. The main means of communication was the mailing of a specially designed informative booklet. Therefore, forecasts of concluded contracts or potential sales in this case were approximate and were not of great interest, since they were not expected to make a significant contribution to sales.
While regarding the main " green"The forecasts of the target markets turned out to be quite reliable, and through them it was expected to receive more than 80-90% of all planned sales. Contacts with their representatives were made in full and specific agreements on supplies were reached.
6. Ranking of communications media based on the “Price - Effect” principle
Human psychology tends to trust and pay great attention to the most expensive things and means of achieving goals. Therefore, in our case, expensive and other paid types of advertising were considered inappropriate until the available and free marketing means were exhausted. The sales goal was doubling current sales volumes, and the marketing plan budget is estimated at 1010 US dollars at the prevailing exchange rate at that time. Tellingly, less than half of it actually achieved sales goals.
We specifically focus on the tiny amount of the marketing budget to highlight the fact that big money does not always solve the problem of achieving sales goals. It is always possible to achieve a lot using the simplest and most cost-effective methods based on analytics and market research. In this case, the very fact of being represented in a large network makes huge advertising costs for promotion unnecessary and allows you to reach numerous secondary groups of clients. Selling to large customers automatically attracts small customers. Another thing is that serving large clients is a special art and requires constant focused efforts. For example, this is manifested in working with, the standards of which, as our practice has shown, are not able to withstand a significant part Russian manufacturers V light industry industry or food production. And this despite the fact that only German retail is capable of surpassing all Russian sales of an individual company, not to mention the profit rate that is incomparable in comparison with the domestic market.
From the point of view of demonstrating an IMC, this project was not very successful due to the described artificial limitations. But the goal of the marketing plan is not to master the budget, but to obtain a result that is qualitatively different from the current one. Therefore, the set of selected instruments for target markets can be expanded in the future with greater efficiency than at the moment. In general, it can be noted that in a country where one federal channel easily replaces all possible IMCs, it is not so easy to show such examples.
Marketing communications goals, marketing tools and budget
A good plan is half done!
Jewish wisdom
Marketing plan
Jim Rohn always said: Never start your day unless you already have it planned out on paper! And this has become the rule of all successful business people.
I, in turn, slightly paraphrased the rule of the great psychologist, and I always recommend to my clients: never start marketing unless you have a regular marketing plan. Otherwise, you risk being left without clients and without money!
It is important to understand that marketing is not about individual gimmicks, gimmicks and tools!
Marketing is a daily painstaking systematic work. And if you want your marketing to be effective, it needs to be planned carefully.
A marketing calendar will help you with this, which will display a marketing plan with specific goals, expected results and a set budget. Creating it is not as difficult as it seems at first glance. You will only need to complete 7 steps.
Let's look at each of them.
Note: At the end of the article there is a link to a marketing calendar template that you can download to your computer and start using in your work.
#1 - Selecting planning tools
You can plan in different ways.
Some people do it the old fashioned way, maybe use a notepad. Some people find it more convenient to use Excel. And some will prefer specialized software.
In fact, it doesn't matter which method you choose. The main thing is the created marketing plan.
There are several free, simple, but no less effective ways to create and maintain a marketing calendar:
- Google docs. Online Excel spreadsheets that allow multiple users to work in them at once. Great for team work.
- Evernote. An online notepad that is also great for team work. On the plus side, you can save and organize any notes regarding your marketing plan. The downside is that all calculations will need to be done manually.
- Trello. Another cool tool for teamwork. Allows you to pull documents from Google docs and create cards with tasks and subtasks, as well as assign responsibility.
If you want to use a specialized professional software, I recommend paying attention to the following applications:
No. 2 - Drawing up a sales plan
The key task of marketing in absolutely any company (except for charitable ones) is to fulfill the sales plan and obtain the planned profit. And you should always remember this!
We will not dwell on the topic of sales planning now, but you should know exactly what financial indicators want to achieve in every month.
This will determine both your marketing budget and the marketing channels you use.
Planning methods
There are three main planning methods:
- top-down planning
- bottom-up planning
- Goals down-plans up planning
In the first case, the company's management independently sets goals and develops plans for its sales department.
In the second case, the sales department develops its own goals and plans, which are sent to management for approval.
In the third case, the company's management develops goals and indicators for distribution development. Based on this data, the sales department draws up a plan, as well as a list of resources necessary to implement the plan. Plans and resources are reviewed and approved by management.
As practice shows, the third method is the most effective.
Although, unfortunately, most distribution companies work according to the first method.
Typically, the sales plan goes down from the business owner to the commercial director, from the commercial director to the head of the sales department, from the head of the department to the senior manager (or supervisor) to the sales managers. Of course, this chain may change depending on the structure of the sales department in the company, but the principle of planning remains unchanged.
Why is this happening?
The answer is quite simple: senior management always acts as an investor.
At the same time, having information about the average interest rate on deposits, management expects its business to grow at least 2 times more than the average rate. Otherwise, a deposit is a more attractive and profitable investment.
Lower-level managers almost never think about the cost of money, so senior management rarely trusts them with planning.
What usually happens in top-down planning?
In most cases, top-down planning encourages shifting responsibility and the development of protest thinking among sales managers. That is, having seen their sales plan for the month, managers begin to look for reasons and arguments why this plan is overestimated and unfulfilled. They perceive any increase in the plan not as an opportunity to increase their income, but as a desire by management to reduce their salary.
But the root of the problem lies elsewhere: the manager is just comparing last month’s sales plan with the current plan.
If the number current plan more than that, the manager perceives it as a whim of management, and nothing more. And he continues to work carelessly, without thinking about what is needed to fulfill the plan.
Believe me, only a few managers with this approach to planning try to figure out how they can increase sales. They will always expect that since management sets plans, they should provide resources for implementation, and also tell them how to implement the plan.
Moreover, if any measure proposed by management turns out to be ineffective, it will automatically turn into an alibi for the manager as to why he did not fulfill the plan. Naturally, after this the manager will demand adjustments to the plan.
Therefore, I consider this approach to planning ineffective.
On the other hand, if planning is left entirely to managers, there is a high probability that managers will simply underestimate their performance. Which, in turn, will naturally not be liked by management, and they will pass on their plan to the sales department.
To avoid eternal problems with planning, the “goals down, plan up” method is used.
How planning is effective Goals down - plans up
It is important to note that this approach to planning is closely intertwined with the company’s development strategy. It involves the involvement of each sales manager in the process of sales planning for the year (with sales distribution for each month) for each product group.
Thus, each manager independently sets an annual sales plan, which is then approved by management.
Here are just a few pros in favor of the Goals Down-Plans Up method:
Managers independently analyze monthly sales for key product groups over the past 2 years.
Thus, they clearly understand the presence of seasonality in sales and can determine the coefficient of seasonal growth and decline. Which will certainly help to more accurately predict sales for the next year.
Managers analyze indicators of quantitative and qualitative distribution. Which, in turn, allows you to analyze:
- Quantity retail outlets, which do not have a top range. Introducing the best-selling items into these outlets will definitely increase the average order, and, accordingly, sales.
- Assortment matrices for each client. This analysis is very important for distribution companies, but very few managers do it.
Firstly, this analysis helps identify high-turnover positions. These are the ones you should focus on when launching marketing activities.
Secondly, it shows low-turnover items that affect the overall assortment turnover rate. After all, it is based on the overall turnover of the assortment that customers demand deferred payment.
For the manager, the priority task is to rotate low-turnover items, which in turn affects the improvement of the overall assortment turnover rate and allows for additional sales.
- “Like to like” sales.
This indicator is also very important for the correct preparation of a strategic plan.
For example, in March last year, the manager worked with 100 retail outlets, the sales volume of which amounted to 100,000 USD. In March of this year, an additional 10 retail outlets opened on the manager’s territory. At the same time, sales volume to all 110 retail outlets amounted to 110,000 USD. Knowing that these 10 retail outlets made a purchase of 20,000 USD, we see that sales at the same client base fell by 10,000 USD
Thus, despite the overall visible increase in sales compared to the same period of the previous year, the “like to like” analysis shows its decline.
For the manager, this is an opportunity to understand the reasons for the decline, as well as determine the potential for sales growth.
Managers plan the necessary resources for sales growth.
Knowing the potential and needs of their clients, managers can create a list of effective activities aimed at increasing sales and distribution indicators. Having data on the effectiveness of previous promotions, the manager can correctly predict in which month it is better to hold events and what kind of increase they will give in sales.
Based on this data, the manager can also draw up an approximate marketing budget for the year, which will help management evaluate the effectiveness of investments in sales development.
Planning elements
The following are the main elements of planning:
- Sales data for each product group for each month for the previous 2 years
This data is necessary so that the manager, firstly, can see growth or decline trends for each product group, and, secondly, can correctly make a sales forecast for each month of the next year. - Market Expectations and Trends
Market expectations can adjust sales plans, both up and down. - Information about seasonality of products
If the product has a pronounced seasonal nature, then naturally the manager needs to know how much sales grow during the season, and, accordingly, how much they fall during the off-season. - Marketing activity plan
Any marketing activity has its own performance indicators. The sales manager needs to draw up a calendar of marketing events based on the performance indicators of previous promotions in order to maximize sales growth. - The emergence of new products in the company’s assortment
Of course, new products can increase a company's sales and should be taken into account in the plan from the moment a new product appears in the company's portfolio. - Clients' business development strategy
IN strategic planning It is important for every manager to consider the development of their clients in the coming year. Opening branches (stores), entering new markets, changing owners - all these factors can influence an increase in sales, or a decrease due to the deterioration of the financial condition of clients. - Information about the planned price increase
Very often, sharp price increases have an impact on sales growth in the month when the price increase occurs, and on a further decrease in sales volumes in subsequent months. It is important for a manager to have this information in order to predict his personal sales volume as accurately as possible.
Having filled in the data, the manager receives a detailed sales plan for the year for each product group in the context of each month. Key Feature This approach to planning is that managers take into account all factors that can affect both the growth and decline of sales.
In most cases, managers find many new opportunities to increase sales and develop distribution. Also, how correctly and competently the plan is drawn up will be an indicator of the professionalism and competence of this manager.
Naturally, approval of the strategic plan will remain with senior management. It is advisable for the manager to “defend” his plan to management, as well as the amount of resources and investments required to achieve it. Then it will be much easier to make changes to the drawn up plan, since management will only have to point out factors that the sales manager might not have paid attention to.
Once the sales plan is approved, the entire company receives both its development strategy for the year and the necessary resources to achieve its goals.
To ensure that plans do not remain just numbers on paper, each sales manager needs to compare actual sales results with planned ones on a monthly basis. This will help you see deviations from the plan for each product group. Thus, each manager will be able to quickly understand the reasons for failure in any area and improve their performance.
Also, analysis of current indicators helps to assess the effectiveness of marketing activities. Based on data on actual sales, it will be possible to abandon ineffective marketing activities and reallocate the budget.
Monthly analysis will regularly show how well the annual planning was done and how effective the planned marketing activities were.
Quarterly plan adjustment
With the help of monthly analysis, the sales department will be able to understand which customers are experiencing growth or decline in sales, as well as identify the factors influencing these deviations. It is important to understand that no planning can be perfect.
No one can 100% protect themselves from aggressive actions of competitors, the emergence of new strong players in the market, the economic situation in the country, or bankruptcy of clients. Definitely, these factors must be taken into account, and changes must be made to the strategic plan once a quarter.
At the same time, when making adjustments, the manager must answer the following questions:
- How long will the emerging factors affect the growth/decrease in sales?
- Are there additional opportunities/risks for growth/decrease in sales volume?
- How can you resist emerging negative factors and what investments are needed for this?
- How likely is it that factors affecting sales will emerge in the near future?
No. 3 - Selecting marketing channels
Choosing marketing channels is one of the most difficult tasks.
First, you need to know exactly how each channel is performing. This will allow you to predict as accurately as possible how much sales each channel is capable of generating.
Secondly, you will need to properly distribute your marketing budget in order to get maximum effect from investment in marketing. When allocating your budget, always remember the 80/20 rule and invest the majority of it in the most effective marketing channels.
Thirdly, you will be able to correctly plan your resource costs (time, money, etc.), and determine what you can do on your own (if you are an individual entrepreneur), what your team (marketing department) can do, and what should be given away outsourced
Fourth, always add new marketing channels to your plan. Test them and measure the results. Keep effective ones in your marketing calendar; discard ineffective ones!
No. 4 - Drawing up goals for each channel and distribution of the sales plan
Not all marketing channels can immediately generate sales.
If, for example, you make a special offer to your regular customers and throw it into the mailing list, you can safely expect that a certain % will immediately take advantage of your offer.
It all depends on the client’s readiness to buy.
Therefore, each marketing channel you decide to use should have clear and measurable goals written in addition to the expected sales target.
Each channel can have its own goals:
For a billboard, the main metric may be the number of calls to your office. Guest blogging has the number of clicks to your site. An advertising announcement placed with partners shows the number of new clients.
By analyzing the implementation of goals, you will be able to identify your problem areas in the sales and customer generation system.
Accordingly, you will need to think carefully about the steps "Like"(design, usability, content, customer focus) and "Build trust"(reviews, recommendations, evidence, value and quality of materials).
These stages are definitely the weakest links in your customer generation system. Think about what can be improved at each stage, find out the opinions of your customers, and be sure to correct mistakes.
#5 - Budget distribution
The next stage is budget distribution.
Many companies approach the formation of a marketing budget chaotically, allocating small amounts to 1-2 marketing channels.
This principle is fundamentally wrong.
Your pricing should initially include the percentage of the marketing budget that you will use monthly. You are ready to part with this amount no matter what!
Therefore, if you do not yet have a marketing budget, determine right now what % of sales (or profit) you will reinvest in marketing monthly.
Once the budget is set, your next task will be to distribute it across marketing channels. The distribution principle is very simple: choose 20% of the channels that provide 80% of sales and invest 80% of your budget in them.
- 15% - remaining used but less effective marketing channels
- 5% - new marketing channels that you have not used before
Why exactly this way?
Firstly, there are no marketing channels that are guaranteed to be equally effective for every company (otherwise, everyone would have been millionaires a long time ago :-D). Everything needs to be tested and verified.
If you don't use different marketing channels and experiment regularly, you risk never learning about those channels that could bring good profits to your company.
Secondly, there is a good folk saying: “Don’t cut the goose that lays the golden eggs.”
This means that you should never reduce the budget for the most effective marketing channels!
No. 6 - Appointment of responsible persons
Distributing and assigning areas of responsibility is the next step in creating an effective marketing plan. You must clearly understand who is responsible for what. Otherwise, you risk finding yourself in a situation where everyone is responsible for everything, and, at the same time, everyone is responsible for nothing.
If you have a marketing department, list the responsible person next to each channel. Talk to him about goals, deadlines, budget and expected sales results. Make sure your marketer understands you correctly.
If you work with partners, be sure to agree on specific actions that the partner must perform and specific deadlines (for example, an advertising post in the partner’s Facebook group should be published on Monday, July 14 at 11.30. It should be pinned to the top of all publications and hang for 3 days).
If you use any outsourced services, use the same principle.
You should always know who you can contact if any agreement is not met. Or who can you hold accountable for the results if the marketing campaign fails.
#7 - Performance Analysis
Analysis of the effectiveness of marketing channels is the final element in the marketing planning system.
You need to know how many new customers and how much sales each channel generates for you. How much does it cost you? How much does each invested unit of money bring you? What is the payback period and return on investment.
Knowing all of these metrics will help you make the most of your marketing budget.
Therefore, monthly sum up the use of each marketing channel: measure key indicators, look at sales volume and the achievement of goals, evaluate effectiveness.
Based on the findings, you will always know how and how effectively your budget is used. You will also be able to identify and abandon unprofitable and ineffective marketing channels.
Let's sum it up
A marketing plan is one of the key elements in the strategy of any company. Lack of planning very often leads to marketing investments becoming ineffective and unprofitable.
A marketing action plan allows you to competently plan sales volume, distribute it across each marketing channel, set goals and distribute the budget. And regular work on the plan allows the company to identify and invest exclusively in the most effective marketing channels.
We offer a ready-made checklist with which you can create a ready-made marketing plan from scratch. The article details the structure and lists the main sections of the marketing plan. We will tell you in what order it is most convenient to draw up a marketing plan, which elements of a marketing plan are mandatory, and which components can sometimes be missed. We are confident that our checklist will be suitable for protecting the promotion strategy of any product, because it is an exhaustive list of important information on the basis of which key strategic decisions are made.
A marketing plan has a fairly clear and logically structured structure, and its development is not a one-day process. You will need a lot of time to collect detailed information about consumers, to study the characteristics and conditions of the market, to determine the competitive advantages of a product and much more. Get ready to process and summarize many different facts and consider more than one alternative for business development. Don't be afraid to take the time to analyze different options strategies.
On average, drawing up a high-quality marketing plan can take (depending on the size of the business and the number of product groups in the company’s portfolio) from 1-3 months. And if you engage in marketing planning simultaneously with solving current issues, then allow at least 2-4 months for this process. 50% of this time will be spent collecting information, 40% on analysis and consideration of alternatives, and only 10% on drawing up the marketing plan itself.
The structure of a standard marketing plan includes 8 elements and is as follows:
What is "Executive Summary"
"Executive Summary" - resume or summary key areas of the marketing plan. This section of the marketing plan attempts to outline the main conclusions, recommendations and goals of the company for the next few years. You fill out this section last, but when presenting your marketing plan, you start with this section.
The practice of laying out the key takeaways at the beginning of any presentation helps align management with the presentation format required, allowing them to evaluate the underlying strategy and prepare questions without detailed examination of the facts. This section of the marketing plan often includes the content, duration of the presentation, presentation format, and preferred form of feedback.
Situation analysis and conclusions
The situational analysis section is designed to quickly get a complete picture of the market, its size, trends and features. Such an analysis helps explain the choice of certain actions in the marketing strategy of a product. The main components of a situational analysis are:
- Analysis of the company’s internal environment and resources, including assessment of the level of achievement of current goals and objectives
- Analysis of consumer behavior in the market, assessment of the reasons for purchasing and rejecting the company’s product
- Analysis of the company’s external factors, competitor behavior and key market trends
A more detailed example of a situational or business analysis of a company can be found in our article:
SWOT analysis and competitive advantages
Any situational analysis ends with a compilation, describing the strengths and weaknesses company, key opportunities and threats to sales and profit growth. Based on the results of the SWOT analysis, the following is formed:
- the main product of the company
- indicating the development vector of product positioning for 3-5 years
- tactical action plan for the use and development of capabilities
- tactical action plan to minimize identified threats
- main
Defining marketing goals and objectives
The first step of any marketing strategy: setting performance targets for the coming year. The marketing plan should contain 2 types of goals: business goals and marketing goals. Business goals relate to issues such as the position of the product in the market (share or place among competitors), sales levels, profits and profitability. Marketing goals consider issues such as attracting new customers, retaining current customers, increasing the frequency and duration of product use.
Protecting your marketing strategy
Marketing strategy presentation is a core section of an organization's marketing plan. At this stage of the presentation of the marketing plan, it is important to talk about the following elements of the marketing strategy:
Without this section, the marketing plan will not be complete and not a single manager will approve the developed programs for product development and its promotion to the market. The section begins with a presentation of the business model or P&L, which shows the projected sales growth from the programs, the required budget for the programs, net income and return on sales. The subsequent stages of this section are comments and explanations on the P&L model:
- Budget structure divided into main cost items
- Review of the main sources of sales growth and correlating them with budget items
- Assumptions used to build the model in the areas of cost growth, inflation and price levels
