5 Steps to Create a Marketing Plan

Step 1: situation analysis

Make the situation analysis a succinct overview of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Strengths and weaknesses refer to characteristics that exist within the business, while opportunities and threats refer to outside factors. To determine the company’s strengths, consider the ways that its products are superior to others, or if the service is more comprehensive, for example. What do you offer that gives the business a competitive advantage? Weaknesses, on the other hand, can be anything from operating in a highly saturated market to a lack of experienced staff members.

Next, describe any external opportunities that can capitalize on, such as an expanding market for the product. Don’t forget to include any external threats to the company’s ability to gain market share so that succeeding sections of the plan can detail the ways you’ll overcome those threats.

Positioning the product involves two steps. First, analyzing the product’s features and decide how they distinguish the product from its competitors. Second, decide what type of buyer is most likely to purchase the product. What are you selling? Convenience? Quality? Discount pricing? Sorry, you can’t offer it all. Knowing what the customers want helps you decide what to offer, and that brings us to the next section of the plan.

Step 2: Describe the target audience

Developing a simple, one-paragraph profile of the prospective customer is the next step. You can describe prospects in terms of demographics—age, sex, family composition, earnings, and geographic location—as well as lifestyle. Ask the following: Are my customers conservative or innovative? Leaders or followers? Timid or aggressive? Traditional or modern? Introverted or extroverted? How often do they purchase what I offer? In what quantity?

If you’re a B2B marketer, you may define the target audience based on their type of business, job title, and size of business, geographic location or any other characteristics that make them possible prospects. No matter who the target audience is, be sure to narrowly define them in this step because it will be the guide as you plan the media and public relations campaigns.

Step 3: List the marketing goals

What do you want the marketing plan to achieve? For example, are you hoping for a 20 percent increase in sales of the product per quarter? Write down a shortlist of goals—and make them measurable so that you’ll know when you’ve achieved them.

Step 4: Develop the marketing communications strategies and tactics you’ll use

This step is the heart and soul of the marketing plan. In the previous steps, you outlined what the marketing must accomplish and identified the best prospects; now it’s time to detail the tactics you’ll use to reach these prospects and accomplish the goals.

A good marketing program targets prospects at all stages of the sales cycle. Some marketing tactics, such as many forms of advertising, public relations, and direct marketing, are great for reaching cold prospects. Warm prospects—those who've previously been exposed to the marketing message and perhaps even met you personally—will respond best to permission-based email, loyalty programs, and customer appreciation events, among others. The hottest prospects are individuals who’ve been exposed to the sales and marketing messages and are ready to close a sale. Generally, interpersonal sales contact (whether in person, by phone, or email) combined with marketing adds the final heat necessary to close sales.

To complete the tactics section, outline the primary marketing strategies, then include a variety of tactics you’ll use to reach prospects at any point in the sales cycle. For example, you might combine outdoor billboards, print advertising, and online local searches to reach cold prospects but use email to contact the warm prospects.

To identify the ideal marketing mix, find out which media the target audience turns to for information on the type of product or service you sell. Avoid broad-based media—even if it attracts the target audience—if the content isn't relevant. The marketing tactics you choose must reach the prospects when they’ll be most receptive to the message.

Step 5: Set the marketing budget

You’ll need to devote a percentage of projected gross sales to the annual marketing budget. Of course, when starting a business, this may mean using newly acquired funding, borrowing, or self-financing. Just bear this in mind—marketing is absolutely essential to the success of the business. And with so many different kinds of tactics available for reaching out to every conceivable audience niche, there’s a mix to fit even the tightest budget.

As you begin to gather costs for the marketing tactics you outlined in the previous step, you may find you’ve exceeded the budget. Simply go back and adjust the tactics until you have an affordable mix.

The key is to never stop marketing.