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How to Write
a Marketing Plan
Marketing Starts with Your Customers
Your marketing plan details how you intend to meet your
customers’ needs and communicate the benefits of your products or services to
them. When deciding about market positioning, pricing, promotions, and sales,
your customers should be top of mind.
The Four Key Components of Your Plan
Your marketing plan should describe how you will segment
your target market, how you will position your products or services
compared to your competition, what your pricing strategy will
be, and how you will effectively reach and influence
your customers.
1. Your Target Market
Your target market is a group of customers that has a
similar need for a product or service, money to purchase the product or
service, and willingness and ability to buy it.
To identify your target market and best serve your market,
you need to:
- Know
your customers
- Understand
what your customers need
- Why
they buy
Because you have limited time, resources, and budget, you
cannot be everything to everyone. To effectively reach customers, you need to
segment your target market into one primary market on which you focus most of
your energy, and at most three secondary markets.
You can segment your target market along four key
characteristics:
- Demographic: Who are your customers? Include information such
as:
- Age
- Gender
- Family size
- Family life cycle (single, married with or without
kids, divorced)
- Income
- Occupation
- Education
- Religion
- Nationality
- Ethnicity
- Geographic: Where do they live? Include information such as:
- Their
country
- Region
(e.g. Pacific, Prairies, Eastern seaboard)
- City
and density (rural, urban)
- Climate
· Psychographic: Why
do they buy? Include information such as:
- Social
class (lower, middle, upper)
- Lifestyle
(leisure activities, exotic vacationer, saver)
- Personality
(gregarious, authoritarian, ambitious)
2. Your Market Positioning
Positioning is the image of your product or service that you
create in the mind of your target market. Your goal is to create an image
that’s unique, differentiated, and definable in the mind of your customers. To
position your product or service, try the following:
It’s essential that all of your marketing materials support
the position or image you are creating.
It’s also critical for you to know your present and
potential competitors, both direct and indirect. Examine their strengths and
weaknesses relative to yours. This will help you select a market position that
provides a competitive advantage.
Your overall position should emphasize those factors that
your customers value most, and those which make you stand out from your
competition.
3. Your Pricing Strategy
Price is a very important factor in your marketing plan. It
affects:
Key factors that affect your pricing strategy include:
4. Your Promotion Strategy
Promotion is the activity of informing, persuading, and
influencing your customers’ purchase decisions.
The type and scope of promotional activities that you need
to undertake will depend on what the promotion is intended to do, and what
goals and objectives you want to achieve. There are a number of reasons for
promotional activities:
Your choice of promotional activities will be determined by
a number of factors, including:
There are four general types of
promotional activities:
