A marketing plan is the first step in creating a successful marketing program for your new business. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be complicated in order to work. Here are the ten basic components of a marketing plan.
You started a company and now you’re thinking about developing a marketing program. You need to begin with a marketing plan. Having been in marketing for more than a decade, I’ve seen my share of marketing plans. Some are short and to the point, while others are hundreds of pages thick and cost thousands of dollars to produce.
The irony is that many of the expensive marketing plans end up on a shelf and rarely get implemented. The simple plans, if researched and implemented effectively, have the greatest impact.
Regardless of the scope of your marketing plan, you must keep in mind that it’s a fluid document. Every business needs to begin with a well-structured plan that’s based in thorough research, competitive positioning, and attainable outcomes. Your plan should be the basis for your activities over the coming months. However, you should always be willing to enhance or redirect your plan based on what proves successful.
Marketing Plan Basics
Collect, organize, and write down data about the market that is currently buying the product(s) or service(s) you will sell. Some areas to consider:
- Market dynamics and patterns, including seasonality
- Customers: demographics, market segment, target markets, needs, and buying decisions
- Product: what’s out there now and what the competition’s offering
- Current sales in the industry
- Benchmarks in the industry
- Suppliers: vendors that you’ll need to rely on
Find niche or target markets for your product and describe them.
Describe your product. How does your product relate to the market? What does your market need, what do they currently use, and what do they need above and beyond current use?
Describe your competition. Develop your “unique selling proposition.” What makes you stand apart from your competition? What is your competition doing about branding?
Write a few sentences that state:
- “Key market” – who you’re selling to
- “Contribution” – what you’re selling
- “Distinction” – your unique selling proposition
RELATED: Review Your Business Progress
6. Market Strategies
Write down the marketing and promotion strategies that you want to use or at least consider using. Strategies to consider:
- Networking – Go where your market is.
- Direct marketing – sales letters, brochures, and flyers
- Advertising – print media and directories
- Training programs – to increase awareness
- Write articles, give advice, become known as an expert.
- Direct/personal selling
- Publicity/press releases
- Trade shows
- Business website
7. Pricing, Positioning, and Branding
From the information you’ve collected, establish strategies for determining the price of your product, where your product will be positioned in the market, and how you will achieve brand awareness.
8. Budget
Budget your dollars. What strategies can you afford? What can you do in-house, what do you need to outsource?
9. Marketing Goals
Establish quantifiable marketing goals. This means goals that you can turn into numbers. For instance, your goals might be to gain at least 30 new clients or to sell 10 products per week, or to increase your income by 30% this year. Your goals might include sales, profits, or customer satisfaction.
10. Monitor Your Results
Test and analyze. Identify the strategies that are working.
- Survey customers
- Track sales, leads, visitors to your web site, and percentage of sales to impressions
By researching your markets and your competition and determining your unique positioning, you’re in a much better position to promote and sell your product or service. By establishing goals for your marketing campaign, you can better understand whether or not your efforts are generating results through ongoing review and evaluation of results.
As mentioned earlier in this article, be sure to use your plan as a living document. Successful marketers continually review the status of their campaigns against their set objectives. This helps ensure ongoing improvements to your marketing initiatives and helps with future planning.
Disclaimer: The content on this page is for informational purposes only, and does not constitute legal, tax, or accounting advice. If you have specific questions about any of these topics, seek the counsel of a licensed professional.
Components of the Market Offering (p. 326)Product Levels: The Customer-Value Hierarchy (p. 326)oIn planning its market offering, the marketer needs to address five product levels thatconstitute a customer-value hierarchy:Core benefit:the service or benefit the customer is really buyingBasic Product:the second level where the marketer must turn the core benefitinto the basic productExpected Product:a set of attributes and conditions buyers normally expectwhen they purchase this productAugmented Product:a productthat exceeds customerexpectations that is prepared bythe marketerPotential Product:encompassesall the possible augmentationsand transformations the productor offering might undergo in thefuture (This is where companiessearch for new ways to satisfycustomers and distinguish theiroffering)Five Product Levels
It is a combination of products, services, information, or experiences offered to a market to satisfy a need or want. For example, in the food industry, a “market offering” might be a sandwich. More broadly, market offerings also include other entities, such as persons, places, organizations, information, and ideas. It doesn’t have to be only physical products (tangible), it can also be services/experiences (intangible). The aim of marketing is to create awareness about this market offering and thereby encourage consumers to purchase it from sellers.
How do you create a market offering?
The first step in creating a market offering is to determine the difference between your product and your competitors’ products. A market offering is when you make something easier for consumers to find or purchase. The new products and services should have a strong business purpose, meet consumer needs, be innovative in design and technology, competitively useful, different from competitors’ products or services that are already available on the marketplace – it comes with an edge over other products or provides superior customer service. A new product or service can turn a company’s market share from bad to good.
How to Price Your Market Offering?
The amount of value that is exchanged for a customer offering (i.e., its “market price“) can vary widely based on many factors including type and quality of the product/service, geographic location, raw materials, time period, seasonality, perceived value to consumers (e.g., low cost or high quality), product features (e.g., advertising), uniqueness/innovation (e.g., cutting edge technology), access to suppliers and other important players in a particular industry, brand name recognition/reputation, and even the legal status of the offering (e.g., whether it is protected by intellectual property rights).
Classifications
Market offerings can be classified as “primary” or “secondary“. Primary market offerings are those which supply a primary need or want, such as food for survival. Secondary market offerings provide convenience and/or leisure time activities, such as fast-food restaurants. Marketings with both primary and secondary benefits may be called “integrated” marketings. For example, in addition to satisfying basic human needs for survival and sustenance, local grocery stores also serve an important role in providing an economic and social infrastructure.
It is common for market offerings to be complementary (i.e., they satisfy a need or want that cannot be satisfied by another product, service, or idea). For example, selling both gaming consoles like PS4 and gaming titles like FIFA. In order to successfully compete in the marketplace, market offerings must be able to satisfy primary needs and secondary wants simultaneously. For example, it is common for grocery stores to provide both food items as well as items that are used for leisure activities such as reading books or playing games.
In this case, the business will need to adjust its marketing strategy in order to meet customer needs. This can be done by either enhancing or removing features from products and services. Moreover, the business can also modify its pricing and promotional strategies.
What is the Difference Between Market and Commercial Offering?
A market is an entire group of people or organizations that share common needs or wants; a commercial is for sale to only one buyer at a time. A business may offer its products and services to multiple markets (for example: global). But most businesses do not operate in more than one market at once.
Conclusion
Market offerings are not designed to solve problems, but to highlight the value of your product or service. If you use them as an end in itself, they can easily become confusing and lose their effectiveness. To be more effective with market offerings, you need to think about how they fit into your overall strategy. Do you want them to complement other marketing tactics? Do they play a role in solving customer problems? They’re also a great way to gain attention and build awareness about your brand, but they shouldn’t be the only marketing strategy you use. If you focus too much on market offerings, it will lead to marketing myopia; this is when you stop thinking about what your customers want and instead focus on what you think they should want.