Building a Strong Marketing Plan

YOU NEED MARKETING TO SUCCEED

In times like this - when a recession hurts your bottom line - you will need a strong marketing plan to weather the down times and eventually propel your business ahead of your competition when the economy turns around. Companies that market their product and image build the reputation and customer interest that can return your investment in the years ahead.

The question is what type of marketing and how to effectively market your company with a limited budget expense. To answer these questions, we will develop over the next few articles a marketing review that will help formulate a plan that will be successful. It is a simple step-by-step plan to analyze your marketing position in order to develop a strategy that will work.

MARKET PLANNING MODEL

We begin with a market planning model illustrated below. We will review each step on the planning process that can be used as a model in your own business planning. Detailed analysis will be discussed with illustrations and examples.

print illustration (pdf form)

Where do we start

We begin with (Aa): Your Marketing Objectives.
The marketing objectives are segmented into two areas:

1. Market Needs Objectives
   
   
   • Market Needs
     define what you want to accomplish in your marketing vision. Are you looking for a new product offering, a new pricing strategy, or perhaps and new market to service. Define the objective(s) you are attempting to make.
     
     
   • Community Needs
     how is your company viewed in the community? Perhaps your marketing plan is to enhance your community presence and community leadership. Again, note these objectives on paper.
     
     
   • Corporate Needs
     what are your corporate objectives? Is is brand name recognition or more importantly, increase revenues.
     
     
2. Sales Target Objectives

• Sales Volume:
  define the sales volume objectives. Is your plan to increase sales with an existing product or an entirely new product and /or pricing?
  
  
• Share of Market:
  what is your current share of the market? Are you in looking to increase - maintain - or regain that share?
  
  
• Distribution Expansion and Other:
  define your distribution plan. Will you stay as is or are you looking to expand into new channels; major retail, e-commerce channel, 1-800 channel, etc.

Note:
write down both your marketing and sales objectives. You will refer to these objectives as your build our your marketing plan.

Next topic

Our next newsletter will begin analyzing your competitive position that will help define the best strategy to achieve your marketing objectives. If you have any questions, reach out to our executive principal for information:

Krayton M Davis
Executive Principal
kdavis@nacbb.com