10 Essential Elements Marketing Roadmap
Marketing Plan
A marketing plan is an important ingredient for success of any company. I have seen marketing plans detailed in half a dozen pages to hundreds of pages. Essentially a marketing plan should cover one year, and align with the long term marketing strategy of the company. In today’s dynamic business environment the marketing plan needs to be reviewed from time to time. I have complied list of 10 points which I feel should be part of any marketing Plan.
1. Target Customers
First thing first define your target customer. It is important that we defines their demographic profile (e.g., age, gender) and psychographic profile (e.g., interests and habits) and what will resonate with them. In short we should create a buyer personas. You can create personas for your customers for free on www.makemypersona.com. It will help you to pinpoint your advertising (and get a higher return on investment) and better understand the language of prospective customers.
2. Unique selling Proposition
Unique selling proposition or USP is hallmark of most successful Brands across the globe. It helps is differentiating your brand from the competition. It requires lot of hard work, hours of brainstorming and creativity to really be able to pinpoint your USP. A good marketing plan should clearly and state the USP and develop a strategy to communicate it to the Target Customers. While creating a USP may seem a simple task for some businesses. But for those needing support may contact me or click here to know more
3. Pricing & Positioning Strategy
Goal is to develop a pricing strategy that places your brand and its products in a certain position relative to your competition. It is important to align your price with the brand position. This section should explain how your price will help you to position your product as desired.
4. Distribution Plan
This section explains how your product will be made available to your customer. Will that involve developing channel partners or to create company owned retail outlets. Which online store to use for promoting your product online or to use your own website? The answers to these should be in tune with the market segment and the product you are dealing with.
5. Promotional Offers
Offers or special deals you give to your customers to boost your sales. The promotional offers can be targeted at existing customers or to new customers and are often run for a specified period only. Before designing a promotions offer we must clearly lay out the objectives, the time frame of the offer and period when the offers is to be run. Click here to checkout promotional offers on amazon you can take some cue from it.
6. Marketing & Promotional Material
Marketing communication and promotional material you are going to use to carry your message to your customers. Review your existing collaterals digital and print for consistency of message and the objective of the campaign. It is advised that you involve a professional ad agency to help you develop good collaterals. In case you are running short of budget and have good library of images then you can use self help training CDs for on Corel or Photoshop. You can also refer to various on line video tutorials also. But these CDs have more structured learning modules.
7. Digital Marketing strategy
No marketing plan is not complete if do not integrate a digital marketing strategy into it. Refer my blog Why Digital Marketing for detail. A comprehensive strategy has to be evolved to target customers in their different buying cycle. This is the only channel which gives you the control to plan for customer in different stages of their buying cycle. If done properly can automate the marketing process and deliver continuous stream of customers and enquries.
8. Conversion strategy
The methods you will employ to convert prospects into customers and customers into brand advocate. Your marketing plan must have conversion strategy clearly defined.
You need to constantly review your sales scripts. Do A/B Testing of your scripts. Build a platform for sharing best practices within the team. Build a strong base of testimonials and offers.
9. Partnerships
You should plan to forge agreements and partnerships with organizations to help you reach new customers. The partnership organization can be from similar industry or different industry. That requires a deeper research and more strategic alliance in terms what a customer buys before or after or with the product you sell. A small recommendation or a strategic positioning of the sales out let in near proximity can bolster your sales.
10. Referral Program
A strong referral program should always be part of the marketing plan. The referral can be in terms of cash rewards or bonus services. See what will click with your customer.
In the end I would just like to add that a good strategist you must have a contingency plan handy, in case things don’t work as planned. A little course correction is essential, which means you need to monitor and review your plan frequently.
For further details you may refer
- Digital Marketing online course
- Get the cheapest eTextbooks rentals at up to 60% off or more!