The marketing plan is nothing more than a document that guides the company in defining marketing strategies, the type of content, the platforms on which the company will be present, the language, and the value of the investment to attract new customers.
With a well-structured marketing plan, the company can create efficient actions related to the audience the brand wants to reach and the image it wants to build.
Now that you understand the relevance of this excellent tool for any business, it’s time to go through all its stages, from planning to practice:
Market Analysis
At this stage, you analyze your current situation within the global scenario, understanding what your company wants to offer as a product or service without forgetting to survey the risks and direct and indirect competitors. The SWOT analysis. It is a performance management tool that helps to understand the scenario in which your company is inserted from 4 points:
– Strengths: analysis of the company’s internal advantages over competitors; – Weaknesses: analysis of the internal disadvantages of the company that can harm the business;
– Opportunities: analysis of external forces that positively influence your business;
– Threats: analysis of external forces that can negatively compromise the company.
In short, strengths and weaknesses concern you and your company. And opportunities and threats talk about external factors which are out of your control.
Defining Your Target Audience
Now, you need to decide who your ideal customer is. Knowing your target audience is essential; to build it, you must think of it as a person or a fictional character, giving physical and psychological characteristics, interests, professions, desires, fears, etc. The more specific you are, the better, as it will be easier to understand how to communicate with your audience.
To help you, do a brief survey of acquaintances and potential customers. Look for details about behavior, gender, age, class, and other information that will help you when designing the actions of the marketing plan.
At this point, you can also trace the purchase journey of your target audience. Consider your customer’s trajectory, from consideration to purchase, and the main behaviors and questions at each stage.
This way, you can map out the ideal content, channels, and approaches for each stage of the journey.
Marketing Mix Analysis
The famous Marketing Mix consists of activities aimed at promoting and marketing the brand or product in the market and is one of the pillars of a successful strategy. The Marketing Mix always considers the 4P’s: Price, product, place, and promotion.
– Product: refers to everything that makes up the product, such as materials, manufacturing, and intangible characteristics;
– Price: refers to everything related to the pricing and (emotional) value of the product;
– Place: refers to all product distribution channels;
– Promotion: refers to marketing actions and activities to promote the product in these channels.
Definition Of Your Goals
After determining your business DNA, target audience, and marketing mix, the next step is to define where and how long your business should go. And just like in the market analysis, here we also bring an excellent methodology to help you: the SMART method SMART
is based on five factors for setting goals:
– Specific (Specific)
To be more likely to be achieved, goals need to be as specific as possible. The easiest way to do this is to answer questions like:
- What do you want to achieve?
- Why do you want this?
- Who is involved?
- Where will this goal take the business once it is achieved?
- When do you intend to do it?
– Measurable
The goals you are setting need to be measurable or concrete. For a goal to be measurable, it must answer the following questions:
- What is the expected result?
- How long will it take for the team to reach the goal?
– Attainable
It is useless to create a goal if it cannot be achieved. Therefore, before making a goal, it is essential to evaluate the following points:
- Based on the history, is it possible to achieve the objective outlined?
- Do employees believe that it is possible to achieve the objective?
– Relevant
Awareness of the relevance of goals will help you stay ahead of trends and stand out from your competitors. And to create a relevant plan, it’s essential to look at the company’s main numbers, such as revenue, number of customers, and profit. In this way, a relevant target will directly impact these essential indicators.
– Temporal (Time based)
Any goal set must have a deadline. You can plan a goal, make progress, and ultimately achieve it with a clear deadline.
Determine The Budget, Action Plans, And Deadlines
One of the last steps is to define how much you want to spend on your marketing plan efforts and how much you expect in return. It is this step that will help you not to exceed your cost limits.
Among the costs, you should consider the acquisition of tools, hiring and training of employees, paid media campaigns, leasing services, and even expenses with the internet, telephone, energy, etc.
In addition, you must also estimate all the action plans and the term of each one of them and those responsible for them. ATTENTION: The deadlines for achieving the objectives must be plausible. This encourages the commitment of all those involved with the plans outlined.
Preparation Of The Plan
Finally, it’s time to summarize everything and prepare the final document that will guide the marketing team.
Start by introducing your business and explain why this document was created. Detail each point you thought about throughout the planning stages without forgetting to write clear and objective texts and prioritize the primary information.
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