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Planning your business activities is crucial in every department – marketing is no exception. A marketing plan is a document essential to define what resources and necessary efforts from marketing teams to achieve business goals. A marketing plan outlines every aspect of your marketing objectives and it helps organizations create an alignment between marketing and overall business strategy, in the long-term and in the short-term as well.
What is a marketing plan and why is it important?
A marketing plan is an important tool for businesses to assess marketing strategies. Marketing plans provide an array of resources and tools that support businesses in promoting product/service offerings. This will allow companies to define the marketing budget and determine which channels to spend money in. This goal can be achieved through the outline of steps taken to reach an end goal. Good marketing plans have clear objectives, timelines, and costs.
These tools help your business thrive and ultimately help the company plan its marketing efforts and business overall budget. A marketing plan is written in many different ways and shares the same thing — that is, it’s built around specific goals the company must achieve.
It is an approach to gaining new customers to achieve business goals. Marketing planning involves understanding the markets, identifying key players, and developing and implementing strategies for reaching customers. Marketing planning is typically developed by marketers with knowledge of everything about the business and the market it operates.
Marketing plan vs. marketing strategy
Marketing strategy is often confused with a marketing plan because the marketing strategy is built upon a strategic plan. Sometimes the strategy and planning are merged into a single document. Marketing activities are outlined quarterly and annually, and marketing strategies outline the value proposition in general.
Although often interchangeable, marketing strategies and a marketing plan do differ in some ways. A marketing strategy explains how a company can achieve a specific target. Marketing plans outline specific daily, weekly, or annual activity requirements in the strategy. Typically companies extended marketing strategies are more general and do not include the actual tasks necessary for each strategy or the time frame during which marketing will be carried on.
Marketing plan vs. business plan
Business plans define the company’s operation as a whole. Business planning can be a blueprint for your business. This guide describes the goals and objectives of the business, including values and financial statements, that the company uses daily in achieving its goals. The business plan should also contain a summary, of the products, and services offered as part of the sales/marketing plan, and the budget. However, not as detailed as in the marketing plan.
What is in a marketing plan?
This plan will look different for every organization as each one operates in different markets, and has different target markets. However, a marketing plan includes an essential part (shown below) that will most likely fit every type of organization no matter what product or service it offers.
1. Target market
The marketing strategy identified the target market for the product/market. Market studies are sometimes used to decide on a target market or marketing channel for an organization’s products or services. Identifying a specific demographic and target audience will assist in allocating marketing resources and efforts, in order to target the desired public.
2. User personas
Alongside your target market should be your user personas. A detailed figure that represents your target audience. List the most important people you want to attract to the business. How can we accomplish that? Which is the greatest challenge? Can you list some of the best solutions you offer to customers? This question requires a lot more research but it can help you find the best information. The first way for generating user profiles is to create a user persona.
3. Extensive competitor analysis
Then in the marketing plan checklist, there is competition research. This section aims at helping you find your competitors and the ways you can find your place alongside them. To evaluate your competitors, you should run market research first. This will show who is market’s most important players and what is the market share of each one of them. By doing this, you will know how you can compete with them and fight to gain that market share.
After conducting this research, a SWOT Analysis is a good tool to see the bigger picture. This is, visually comparing your company to leaders in your industry and identifying strengths and weaknesses.
Even though this analysis can be time-consuming and even expensive sometimes, it will for sure grant results in the long term.
Types of marketing plans
Different marketing plans will fit different business needs. It outlines how the new product or service will be marketed, how it is targeted, and how it will be promoted. There are three main types of marketing plans, depending on the organization’s goals.
- Growth marketing plan: based on experiments focused on data-driven decisions;
- Content marketing plan: use of different tactics to promote a business or product through content; inbound marketing is a great way to implement this type of marketing plan;
- Product launch marketing plan: this plan details how a new product will be launched in a market through various marketing tactics such as price manipulation, social media marketing, and how this product will get to customers, for example.
Key Takeaways
A marketing plan is essential when determining what are your organization’s goals and how the marketing team will achieve them. Everyone should be on the same page so the plan outlined works smoothly and with success.
Photo by Bogdan Karlenko on Unsplash
