CREATE YOUR MARKETING PLAN

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort .” -- Paul J. Meyer

Mission Statement• One or two paragraph statement

about your business that briefly pinpoints the overall important purpose of your business.

• Include your most important promises to:

• Customers

• Employees

• Stockholders

All actions and activity should stem from the Mission Statement. Everyone in your company should know and understand this statement.

• Customers:

• Describe your best customers.

• Where are they located?

• How do they want you to communicate with them?

• Most important: Why do they need / want you?

• Competitors:• What are they doing?• What are their strengths, weaknesses and how do

you compare?• Industry/product trends – know what’s happening,

where you stand, and how your company and products need to measure up.

Situation Appraisal

Goal Setting•List out your goals for the next year:•Sales

•Profits

•Market share

•Other goals

•List out specific goals beyond the next year•Expansion plans?

•New products?

•New direction?

•What else?

Product Positioning/Messaging

•Describe your products or services

•Why should your audience care?

•What are their pain points, challenges, aspirations?

•When they buy from you, what are they really buying? Expertise, peace of mind, functionality…

Marketing Budget

•What’s your annual budget for marketing?• Traditionally, this has been up to 10% of

annual sales.

• For digital and internet marketing, plan on at least 3 – 5% of annual sales.

Branding• Starts with an image strategy

• Does your business have a logo?

• How does it express your business and products – should it show sophistication, fun, intellect, quality, warmth, family, etc.?

• Understand what qualities are most important to your business and products.

• Then determine how best to express that image.• In your logo

• In your communications

• Letterhead, envelopes, email

• Advertising, marketing materials

• Website and other online forums

• Product packaging

• Your location, especially if prospects or customers frequent it

Marketing Strategy and Tactics

The answers to the questions in the previous slides will determine your marketing strategy and resulting tactics.

• Strategy: Your overall game plan or plan of action to accomplish your goals.

• Tactics: The specific marketing tools you use to implement your strategy – how you get your key messages across to your prospects.

Marketing Strategies

•Which strategies work best for your goals?

• Digital Strategy – various specific online marketing action plans

• Content Marketing – Helpful info you provide in various ways, usually online

• Market expansion – expand your product line or your geographical reach

• Market segmentation – specialize your offering for just one type of customer; or offer your products to a new customer base

• Market share strategy – focus on growing your share of the overall market

• Positioning strategy – focus your marketing on the key points your product excels in to secure your place in your customer’s minds

• Quality strategy – be the quality option and make sure your prospects know

• Reminder strategy – prospects use products like yours all the time, remind them to pick them up

• Innovative distribution – getting your products to prospects in a unique way

• Innovative products – providing unique and different products

• Other?

Determine your Marketing Tactics – specific actions based on your strategies

• Inbound Marketing – online or physical tactics that bring interested prospects reaching out to you

• Content tactics, such as, useful information through blogs, e-columns,

white papers, case studies, e-books, videos, webinars, e-conferences &

more (see next slide for details and stats)

• Regularly updated website combined with search engine optimization (SEO)

• E-mail marketing: lead nurturing tactics, warm e-mail prospecting, e-newsletters and more

• Social media marketing

• Closed loop marketing – marketing and sales work together while providing info needed on how leads from marketing to sales turned out: sale or no sale and why

• Able to measure your return on investment (ROI)

Determine your Marketing Tactics•Outbound marketing – specific tactics where you

reach out to prospects

• Billboards

• Television commercials

• Direct mail

• Print media

• Trade shows

• Banner advertising

•Difficult to measure ROI

Example: Flesh out your goals with specific objectives and how to achieve them through your strategies and tactics

Formalize your plan

•Write it all down

•Review it with your staff

•Refine it

•Consider it a living document

Follow-up

•Implement your plan

•Observe the results

•Review and update tactics

•Alter the plan as needed

•Act on the new plan

•Repeat

•Generate leads

•Close sales!

About Mary Beth Saldivar:

Mary Beth is a marketing strategist/coach/consultant/writer with over 30 years of B2B business and marketing experience.

Marketing works best when you have a well-thought-out plan designed specifically for your business and your prospective customers.

There’s so much more about creating a marketing plan than can be presented in this slide deck. But, hopefully, this gives you a good place to start. If you would like assistance in moving through the Create your marketing plan process, call 815.341.1160 or visit http://www.marybethsaldivar.net/contact.html.