Committing to a Written Annual Marketing Plan

A lot of hard-earned money goes out the window every year because otherwise intelligent business people spend good money on bad marketing ideas.  Why?  Most often because he/she doesn’t commit to a written plan designed to achieve his/her expressed business goals.  Small business owners in particular often spend their days reacting to the crisis or opportunity of the moment.  While that’s sometimes necessary, having a solid marketing plan can increase the odds of making profitable decisions, whether or not under pressure.

An easy way to make the daunting task of writing a marketing plan more manageable is to work toward answering one key question: How will you communicate a meaningful difference about your product or service to those who might be most interested in buying it? 

This question can be answered by breaking it down into five smaller questions.

1. Who is your target customer?  Your market may be all potential buyers in a geographic area, but to whom do you sell most of your product or service?  Segmenting your market allows you to focus limited resources on those customers most likely to bring in sales.

2. Who are your competitors?  You need to understand their strengths and weaknesses, their selling strategies and their market position (category leader, follower, challenger, niche player) relative to your own.

3. What is your unique selling proposition (USP)?  In a single sentence you should be able to articulate what makes your product or service both unique and desirable in comparison to your competition.  Is it quality? Price? Service? Though you may be able to list several benefits, focus on the one or two that are most important to your target customer.

4. What methods will you use to communicate your USP to your target customers?  This is the action stage of your plan.  You must choose the communication channels that are most effective to reach your customers.  It is crucial to do your homework and understand which methods will work best for your product or service, target customer, budget and business.

5. How will you measure the results of your marketing efforts?  No marketing plan can be considered successful unless its results are tracked and evaluated against pre-determined objectives.  Be sure to build this mechanism into every marketing tactic.