The long-anticipated new year has since kicked off and is almost becoming stale. The beginning of a new year is always a good opportunity for business people to set new goals and outline strategies for achieving them. One of the best tools that can help move a business forward is a good marketing plan - a document that captures the marketing objective, goals, strategies and action plans for the year.
Here are a few steps to help in formulating a simple but highly effective marketing strategy and plan:
Identify Your Target Market
Marketing can be defined as the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably. But you cannot do any of these without first knowing who the “customer” is. In actual fact, the “customer” can be classified into many segments and the particular one(s) that you successfully engaged last year may be different from that of the current year. So, it’s very important to first select a few customer segments that you want to target in the current year.
Conduct a Simple Market Research
It is said that ignorance is bliss, but in business, nobody gets rewarded for being blissful. “Market research” does not necessarily have to be something complex and expensive. You just need to find a way to obtain certain information about your target market and the business environment, in order to map out a strategy for achieving your business objectives.
Set Your Marketing Objectives
What exactly do you want to achieve in the current year, next three or even five years? If you don’t know where you are going to, you are not likely to ever get there because “there” does not exist. Be clear about your “there”, in terms of sales quantity and revenue, profits, market share etc.
Develop Your Strategy
Your strategy is the big idea that will move your business from where it is currently to where you desire it to be. Depending on the present state of your business and your research findings, you may want to explore a market development, market penetration, product development or diversification strategy.
Plan Your Actions
You need to flesh out your strategy into specific actionable plans. A good framework to make decisions and plans around are the 8 P’s of marketing – Product, Pricing, Placement, Promotion, People, Processes, Physical Evidence and Productivity. Ensure that you sufficiently answer the question: who does what, when and where?
Overall, it may be helpful to engage a Marketing Consultant that will guide you and your team through the above process.