| |
| |
|
|
|
Marketing Planning Made Simple - Another Small Business Power Tool
Marketing planning must be really difficult and complex, otherwise why would there be so many books written on the subject ? right? Well, I'm just enough of a skeptic to believe that many of these books were designed more to make money for their publishers and authors than to make marketing planning simple and understandable. I spent more than 30 years working with very successful small business people who never wrote a single marketing plan. Why didn't they need complex, 100-page marketing plans chock full of statistics, charts and graphs like the experts recommend? It's because they knew exactly where they wanted to take their companies and how to get them there and they were universally successful. The fact is they basically carried their product "marketing plans" around in their heads. That's how simple marketing planning can be. In fact, if you strip marketing planning down to its most basic elements, you could just about write your plan on the back of a napkin. Okay, that might be a bit of an oversimplification, but let's look at the six basic things you need to know for successful marketing planning. 1. The situation. Is this a new or existing product or service? If it has competition, how is it better than the competition? Bigger? Lasts longer? Easier to use? Offers more features? Priced better? You should be able to sum up your situation in a couple of sentences. If not, maybe you don't really understand the situation. 2. The market. How big is the market for your product or service? This can be defined in terms of total dollars, number of units sold or any other quantifiable number. The important thing is to know the size of your market because only by knowing this can you define a marketing objective. You also need to define what the market looks like -- Males, age 25-45? Soccer Moms? Working mothers? Seniors? Childless couples? A market isn't just numbers, it's people. And it's important to understand where they are economically, what's important to them, and what problems you can help them solve. 3. Strategy. Now that you have defined your situation and your market, it should be easy to develop a marketing strategy. For example, if your product is footless, control top panty hose, your strategy might be to "focus sales efforts on figure-conscience women age 34-45 during the spring and summer months." 4. Tactics. If "strategy" is what you intend to do, "tactics" is what you need to do to accomplish it. In the case of the strategy example above, the tactics might be: - Begin sales efforts against distributors by Feb. 1 - Have products in distribution pipeline by March 1 for delivery to retailers no later than April 1. - Begin concentrated radio advertising in 12 key markets by April 15 ?and so on 5. Objective(s). You can frame your objectives any way you want but you have to assign a number and a date. It's no enough to say, "Successfully introduce the new product by year's end." In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, "If you don't know where you're going, you might end up somewhere else." If you don't include a number and a time, you will never know whether or not you were really successful. Write objectives like "sell 5,000 units by December 31." Then, on January 1, you can count sales and determine how successful you were. Best case, you will find you sold 5,000 or more units and will know your marketing planning was right on. And if you didn't meet the objective? You should be able to at least learn a lesson and do better next time. 6. Budgeting. The final thing you need to consider is how much money you can spend to meet your objective. The best way to do this is break down your budgeting by tactics. If you need to reach 100,000 women to sell 10,000 units of your product, do you have the money to do this - in terms or radio, newspaper, TV or direct mail? Do you need collateral materials such as brochures or in-store displays? How much will these things cost? Depending on your product or service, you may also have to hire a PR firm or an advertising agency. Be sure to budget for this expense. Can you add more elements to your planning? Of course. Just go buy one of these marketing textbooks and you'll find pages and pages of information that could be incorporated into your plan. The point here is that maybe you don't have to make your marketing planning a huge and laborious project. Do what many of my clients have done - keep it simple, something you can just carry around in your head if that's your style. The important things are your situation, your market, your strategy and tactics, your objective and your budget. Know these things and you're well on your way to success. Article by Douglas Hanna. Douglas is a retired advertising and marketing executive and long-time Denver resident. He is the webmaster of http://www.all-in-one-info.com, a free resource for information on a variety of subjects. Please visit his site to subscribe to his free newsletter, "Tips & Tricks to Save Money & Live Better."
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Shopping Comes Back To The Community THE GREAT BRITISH TRADITION OF STREET MARKETS IS UPHELD AT STREETTRADERSUNITED.COMHammer Force Ltd, a Croydon-based online service provider offers people who enjoy an alternative to impersonal shopping malls a chance to access a site which lists more than 708 UK markets, arranged by region in an easy-to-use format. Practical Advice to Generate Successful Campaigns Using Merged Lists You could end up with poor results when designing a direct mail campaign that combines your inhouse list with one or more rented lists. Merging lists generates a set of conditions that you may not have thought about at the conception stage. Are Your Prospects Walking Out on You? After 11 years in sales, I've put together and delivered more sales presentations, briefings, and demos than I care to remember. But the nice thing about repetition is that after a few dozen presentations you get very good at reading body language. Identifying, Creating and Using Your USP? What's your USP? Don't know, or worse still, you've never heard of it.USP is an acronym for Unique Selling Proposition. The Five Most Common Joint Venture Marketing Mistakes To Avoid Joint Venture marketing has become a highly popular way for small businesses to maximize their profits. When two or more businesses combine their resources synergistically, it creates greater marketing impact and bigger profits than either can have alone. 5 Great Ways to Reach Your Target Market There are many ways to reach out and find the people you are trying to attract for your business. Here are just a handful of ways to get you started:1) Attend organization meetingsWhere do people in your target market hang out? Research this, and then plan to attend a meeting or two to mix and mingle. Top 5 Tips For Media Selection Marketers have a wide variety of media at their disposal. Most of us think first of the advertising troika of newspapers, magazines and TV. Your Plan For Marketing Success The most important, yet overlooked aspect of marketing is an actual written marketing plan A business simply cannot succeed without marketing. Whether you are a one person business or have 50 employees, you simply must have a marketing plan to succeed. Take a Leap! How To Take Your Business To New Heights Take a moment to reflect on the current reality of your business. Is it everything you dreamed it would be or is it more like a nightmare?Regardless of the current reality, your business can always improve. Marketing in Business and Commerce in the New Consciousness The point is what you give to another you give to yourself; the reason being that there is only one of us. You are apart part of the Universal life force just the same as your customer is. 2 Step Marketing Do it Right.I receive postcards all the time. Have Something Good To Say If you don't get this right, you can just forget about everything else.. Focusing Your Marketing Efforts One of my favorite quotes is often used to describe goal-setting -- but it applies equally well to your marketing efforts. We start with Alice lost in the woods in Wonderland, where she comes upon the Cheshire-Cat. Viral Marketing with a Powerful Twist What would you do with 500, 1000 or more additional visitors each day? Imagine how your web business will grow with an extra 2000, 5000 or MORE leads each month . . Create Your Own Rumors A consultant new in the city asked me how I managed to get business so fast. Working for that marketing company definitely gave me a jump start. Beware of Magazine Style Yellow Pages Ad Design. I have been designing Yellow Page ads for the past 15 years. I have been fully submerged in the medium. How to Give Your Biz a Boost with a Summer Marketing Makeover Are you on track for hitting all your business goals for the year? A quick check-up of your promotional efforts can reveal "week spots" and help identify what needs tweaking to give your business a healthy boost in the next few months. Here are five key areas to focus on with your mid-year marketing makeover. Encouraging Contact The small time promoter has to work hard and on a shoestring to get an audience of a few hundred people to fill a venue. Flyers, word-of-mouth and media name checks are some of the tools promoters use to fill small venues or club nights. Effective Marketing For any business to be successful whether on or offline it has to be marketing effectively. You are going to need more than a great looking site with fabulous products or services to obtain success. Feature Your Benefits Sales Copy? eventually every small business owner must consider what needs to be included in order to produce a successful advertisement or piece of marketing material.You begin with a fancy graphic, your company logo, a slogan, and perhaps a special offer.
|
| home | site map | |
| TaraHOST © 2007 | |
| |
