How to Develop the Right Marketing Plan

In my previous blog entry (October 12, 2012), I described the benefits and importance of a marketing plan for almost all businesses, small and large. A marketing plan can save a business by adapting to changing market forces. The plan leads business managers to look at many more points of view than otherwise considered. If done right, the plan can lead a business to growth and prosperity.

The question is: How do we develop a useful, practical marketing plan? There are commercial Web sites that provide template marketing plans. All you have to do is change the name of the company and revise some of the numbers and other facts to customize the plan for your own business. That is an example of how not to create a functional marketing plan.

Following best practices, business managers need to designate a marketing manager in charge of the marketing plan. However the marketing manager should have a rank high enough to gain the authority and the credibility to succeed. The job of creating a plan requires digging deep into your market, your close competitors, your customers, and all other dimensions of your business.

Your business deserves this kind of authentic and original research and analysis. There are many methods for accomplishing this goal. Most all methods include the need to get all the stake-owners, the managers of other departments from accounting to operations and sales and so on. Buy-in from all these managers and many of the employees is important for the plan’s implementation to become a success—one that yields results.

Beyond this, you develop a structure for the way to think and view your business’s position in the market. This structure ought to broaden and deepen your view of your business. Below are just a starting point of basic, essential deliverables for your plan. This set of questions offers a baby step toward a completed marketing plan.

Market structure and categorizing:

• Do you know clearly the market you serve?
• Have you mapped your market for your products and services and their total values, volume, and key factors for your business?
• Have you identified the distinct groups of your clients or customers and prioritized them?
• Have you clearly categorized the groups among your clients or customers in terms of their distinct needs?

Differentiation:

• Did you analyze how well you satisfy client or customer requirements beyond what your close competitors do?
• Have you identified opportunities and threats for each group of clients or customers?

Scope:

• Have you categorized each client or customer group by its potential for profit growth over the next three years?
• Have you charted your company’s competitive position by each group of clients or customers?
• Have you drafted objectives based on value, profit, market share?
• Based on the information compiled above, are the strategies in line with the objectives?
• Are key success factors pegged as milestones for each department?

Capturing Value:

• Do your goals and strategies align with the profit goals?
• Does your yearly budget support and aim at the same goals and milestones drawn out from the marketing angles above?