Create a Great Marketing plan with The Power of 6

by Dotun Olagbadebo | Dec 20, 2017 | Business

Create a Great Marketing plan with The Power of 6

As a small business owner, having a marketing plan, which outlines your company’s course for success is important. A marketing plan describes who your customers are, where they get information and how you expect to reach them. Having an in-depth layout of your marketing strategy can reveal opportunities from a new audience or potential product line, pitfalls in pricing, competition reaction, and potential reach. Here are 5 tips to creating a great marketing plan.

Know your target market.

Before you can write a marketing plan, you need to find and understand the specific demographic you’re targeting. Research your target market by asking those within it.

Why should a customer use your business?

Figure out the core need that your product or service will meet; is it to help your customers do their job more efficiently? Be respected and admired by friends? Your product/service should be designed to solve client problems or meet customer needs better than the competition can.

Identify your competitors

Small businesses seldom take the time to study their competitors in depth, or determine competition that may be outside their industry but just as capable of luring the customer away. Knowing who they are, what their core competitive advantages are and how they will respond to your offering will help you figure out strategies to combat such losses.

Let your customers know what your brand symbolises.

You should be able to write down a simple declarative sentence of how you will meet customer needs and beat the competition. The best positioning statements are those that are single-minded and focus on solving a problem for the customer in a way that promotes the best value.

Do an audit

Auditing your business, which you can do with the help of a third-party contractor, can help you recover if your initial marketing strategy doesn’t give you the results you wanted. Understand what products or services you are offering, then identify who you help and how you help them. Next, check all your marketing platforms to ensure they reflect that message. This will help you avoid a disconnect with the audience.

Marketing Approach

How do you plan to reach that target customer? Here are two marketing channels to use asides broadcast and print media:

1. Social media. Every type of customer is on some type of social media platform, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn. Focus on the ones that can benefit your business the most. Figure out where your customers are spending their time, and set up shop on those platforms. Develop a content strategy that can be executed internally, and then execute your strategy by posting branded content on your selected platforms.
2. Email marketing may not be as new a concept as social media marketing but it is an effective and popular choice for small business owners. Companies can implement email marketing techniques in a number of ways, including newsletters, promotional campaigns and transactional emails.

In conclusion, creating a well-defined list of budgets, goals and action items, with appropriate personnel assigned to each, can help make your marketing plan a reality.

This article was adapted from Business News Daily