This section is the meat of your marketing plan. It describes where you want to go and how you will get there.
Objectives
Objectives are your business goals. For example, you may want to increase sales by 20% over the next year or introduce a new product or enter a new market. Objectives should be specific, measurable, and have a time-table for completion.
What are your business goals? What specific things do you want to accomplish in six months? In one year? In five years?
Your sales forecast should go here in your marketing plan write-up. A sales forecast attempts to predict how much you will sell over a given period of time. It should be ambitious but realistically achievable.
What level of sales do you want to achieve for the next month? In six months? In 12 months?
Strategies
Strategies are your general plans for meeting your marketing objectives. Your strategies define your market and how you will meet the needs of that market better than your competitors.
This point bears repeating: your marketing strategies should be designed around the needs of your customers.
Your Target Market
It is far easier and just about always more profitable for a small business to define a specific target market and spend resources marketing to that niche market.
Mass marketing aims to sell to as broad of a group of customers as possible by exposing the marketing message to as many people as possible. The resources involved in mass marketing are usually prohibitive to small businesses, especially since small businesses usually cater to a smaller, more specific marketing segment. For example, a target market for a small business selling bathtub fixtures might be local home builders.
In the Market Analysis section above, you determined (hopefully) who exactly your target markets are, and what their needs, wants, and expectations are. The next step is to determine how your products or services can meet the needs of this market.
Competitive Advantage
What is your competitive advantage? Your product or service must offer more value to your customers than your competitors. Does your product or service solve a problem that your competitor does not? Do you offer a better solution than your competitor?
Market Position
What is the perception of your business that you want your customers to have? Who are you and why will you meet your customer’s needs better than anyone else?
What is the most compelling reason for customers to do business with you rather than your competitors? Do you deliver a real benefit to the customer? What truly separates you from your competition? Are your products or services unique?
Your Marketing Mix
Once you define how you are going to service your customers better than your competition, you can now design your marketing strategies to balance the Four P’s: Product, Price, Promotion, and Placement (otherwise known as your marketing mix).
Product
Product and services are the specific items and benefits you sell to customers. Your marketing strategy should determine what products and services you offer and what features they will have. Your product strategy should include how your product will be packaged and how it will be branded. Part of branding is choosing a logo for your company.
Finally, you should be managing your customer’s experience in purchasing the product or service from you so that they will have a positive impression that can lead to repeat sales and referrals.
Price
Pricing can be one of the most difficult aspects of marketing. If you price something too high, sales will go down along with your profits. If you price something too low, you will sell a lot, but still your profits will be down. Somewhere between these two extremes is a price point that will maximize your profits.
That being said, your goal is not necessarily to price your product or service to sell, but instead your goal should be to diminish the importance of price to your customers. This can be done by offering a quality product or service, by clever branding and presentation, and by excellent customer service.
Promotion
Promotion is how you let your customers know what your product or service is, what it does, why it is better, and how they can buy it. Promotion also communicates your brand and inspires customer admiration, trust, and loyalty.
There are many promotional strategies and tools available including advertisements, sales promotions, public relations, networking, and, of course, your web site.
Placement
Product placement or distribution encompasses all of the activities in delivering your product from the producer to your customer. It can include taking orders, packaging, inventory management, storage, transportation, and customer follow-up service.
Tactics
Tactics are the specific actions you will take to implement your strategies. For example, you may create a web site, design a logo, offer a special promotion, or place an ad in a trade journal.
This section should list the actions (with due dates) you are going to take to meet your marketing objectives.