Do you want to start marketing a new product? If the answer is no, read this article quickly!
Why create a advertising plan for the year?
This document, which is a real management tool , is essential in achieving a development strategy for your business. The marketing plan, produced annually, will allow you to identify market opportunities, set the annual goals for your business and find a way to reach your goals.
The marketing consultants suggest their clients to make a marketing plan for the growth of their business, but especially for:
· Detect and understand changes in your external environment. It is important for your business to have an overview of the competition in its market. Are they developing new products? Do they hire new employees or prepare partnerships? Thus, by carrying out a rigorous strategic watch of your markets and by analyzing your competition, you will be able to better anticipate changes in your environment.
· Evaluate the performance of the sales / marketing function and detect trends. Unfortunately, the analysis of sales is often not very structured in companies. However, it allows you to assess the results of your sales and your sales / marketing force to detect variations in your sales (up or down) and to see if there are changes in your environment. Sales analysis is like an alarm system that tells you when there is a change in your environment.
· Identify your challenges, set your marketing / sales objectives, define your positioning and develop your growth strategies . To face the challenges and achieve your marketing / sales objectives, it is necessary to develop growth strategies. To do this, you must adopt a structured approach aimed at:
o get to know your markets and customers better for segmentation purposes;
o establish a strong positioning and define a differentiated offer;
o develop new customer segments and / or new geographic markets.
For the growth of your business, you must develop an action plan for each priority segment according to its marketing mix: product, promotion, distribution and price. Performance indicators can be developed to measure your effectiveness and adjust you if necessary.
The main steps required to complete a marketing plan
Know that with such a document in your hands, you will be better equipped to specify your strategies, convince your customers to buy your products and thus increase your sales. However, there are a few steps to complete this document. Here they are :
Analyze the situation: this consists of analyzing the internal and external environment of the company, but also of the competition. In a way, it is a question of identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that characterize this environment.
Describe the target market : the objective is to collect as much information as possible about your customers which can allow you to draw up a precise profile and to know their motivations of purchase.
Define clear objectives : at this stage, you must describe the benefits you expect from your marketing plan. To do this, you must set achievable and realistic goals and put in place the most precise timetable possible.
Identify marketing strategies : once the objectives have been defined, it will be a question of identifying the means that your company will have to take to promote its products or services to its target customers. The strategies that you will identify will take into account the marketing mix or the “4 Ps” of marketing (product, price, place and promotion).
Establish a marketing budget: this is the last step, but not the least! Establishing a budget for your promotional activities is an important phase of the marketing plan. The budget makes it possible to measure the financial means which your company has and to plan the actions according to the degree of maturity of this one.
To know more click here.