Stepping Stone To A Great Marketing Plan
Stepping Stone To A Great Marketing Plan
Do you wish a long fruitful life for your business? Where do you wish to see your business 10 years from now? Do you wish to be a top player in the game amongst the competitors? Obviously! To make that happen, a business needs to have a healthy marketing plan. Marketing is one of the core functions of a business that redefines and shapes up the brand personality. A couple of days back, I came across this amazing read on how to adopt a great Marketing Plan for a business. Must say! Took me through some good insights. Before diving deep into the aspects, we should all get one thing straight, that a marketing plan varies and it highly depends on the kind of industry you’re working in, so plan it accordingly. So let’s get started!Run a Situation Analysis
To start from scratch, our first move should always be about analyzing our current situation by preparing a SWOT(Strength Weakness Opportunities Threats) Analysis (A MUST HAVE), keeping a shrewd eye on our competitors by performing a Competitor analysis. Understanding the USP (The Unique Selling Point) of your own business is important here as it gives you a clear picture of whether your business is worthy enough to stand out of the crowd.
Identify Your Target Audience
Secondly, the article emphasizes the need of identifying the target audience. Now here’s where you’ve got to ask yourself the important question, “ Who exactly are your Target Audience? ”
It’s a good practice to always invest your time and energy on a certain section of people who would need, love, and appreciate your products/services. To know that you’ve got to understand the buyer persona by finding out :
- Who’s going to benefit from your product/service, how is it going to fit into their lifestyle?
- Do we have that one element the target audience is looking for?
- Demographic information like gender, income levels, age, education, occupation, location, etc.
Jot Down Your SMART Goals
Have you ever set off for a journey without knowing the destination? Classic example right?! Well, the answer is obviously NO! Because you’d probably get lost and loose tracks. You need to know your destination. Likewise, the same thing applies while creating a Marketing Plan, you’ve got to define real SMART goals. SMART Goals stands for (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timebound). This prods us in the right direction by telling us that goals should be:
- Specific and not vague
- Have a benchmark that can be measurable
- Acceptable work that enhances the teamwork
- Being relevant and practical about a situation
- Tasks that can be completed in a time frame.
Explore Your Tactics
Once you’ve defined your goals, the next step is to set your eye on the strategies that would help you achieve those goals. Just loosen it up and ask yourself this question, which are the kinds of platforms that you’re willing to hop on, to promote your product/Service? Like:
- Social Media Advertising
- Paid advertising
- Magazines
- Blog posts
- Celebrity endorsements
- Videos of happy customers
Plan Your Budget Simultaneously
To achieve your goals, you need strategies that can get you there, and work out on the strategies, you need to plan your budget. A marketing plan without a budget will make your goals look blur. While you plan your strategies, ensure you plan your budget simultaneously like the amount of time consumed, the ad spaces to be purchased, pricing, distributing, etc. A budget ensures you stick to the target. As they say “ You have to spend money to make money”
To get in-depth information on Marketing plans please visit Ms. Rebecca Riserbato’s blog in the link shared below:
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/marketing-plan-template-generator?hubs_signup-url=www.hubspot.com%2F&hubs_signup-cta=hsg-nav__box-link&_ga=2.59852077.1663861663.1594620619-644082584.1564664258
