Are you one of the businesses that skips creating a marketing plan? Businesses may not understand the significance of creating and implementing a marketing plan, but it’s a major factor in a company’s success. A marketing plan is more than just a plan, it’s the roadmap to enhancing your rate of growth.
The Benefits
Even though you may think that you’re saving money by avoiding a marketing plan, you’re really spending more. A marketing plan pays for itself because it’ll save you time and money overall. Without a marketing plan, businesses will end up wasting time with trial and error or guess work to find effective marketing activities. Having a plan ends the guess work and immediately sets your path forward. Strategic planning is more effective right off the bat with everything laid out ahead of time and no need for guessing.
Incorporating all the marketing strategies of a plan brings exponential growth to your business. Hypothetical situation: a business does minimal marketing or advertising and sees a corresponding return of $100 growth/day. This business might be content with this amount, but they wouldn’t be running at its highest potential. That’s because their advertising could be optimized for exponentially greater growth. By doing all or more marketing strategies with a marketing plan, this business could create a return of $1000 growth/day. Things will improve quicker with added marketing mediums creating an increased return and greater level of success.
A Marketing Plan with the 4 P’s
A marketing plan should be designed to address the 4 P’s of marketing: product, placement/promotion, price, and positioning. The 4 P’s offer insight about your business and the best ways to reach customers. This gives you an understanding of where you’re at and how you can successfully create a marketing plan.
1. Product
This describes the product or service that your business offers. What exactly are you offering and why would a consumer want to buy this product or service? What makes your product better than a competitor’s? Your product includes the unique value proposition, the unique benefits your product brings in solving customer needs.
Product is also proven with how the audience perceives your brand. What the audience perceives of your brand has a role in the value associated with your product and company. You should keep this in mind when creating a marketing plan and focus on aspects that set you apart in the market.
2. Placement/ Promotion
Next is the placement of your product or service in the market. A SWOT analysis is a useful tool to do market research and find your most effective placement and ways to promote. A SWOT analysis measures the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your business. This will help you become aware and take advantage of your strengths and outside opportunities. While also acknowledging and working to limit your weaknesses and threats.
A SWOT analysis helps in deciding how to promote a product and reach your audience based on your placement. Placement/promotion is a go–to market strategy of where your business fits and ways to get the necessary recognition. Also, finding the marketing and sales channels work to better promote your business from your specific role in the market.
3. Price
Price is one of the factors in the consumer’s decision to buy. Knowing what others charge for comparable products helps you to see where you’re ranking in the market. What’s a reasonable price point and what are people willing to pay? You should create a budget with margin analysis, so you can price your product accurately. This should reflect what you need to charge to have a proper margin.
A competitor analysis would also help to compare your business against competition in the market. A high caliber plan would include a positioning map. This shows where you are compared to other competitors based on two factors like price and quality. Maybe price is what sets you apart from your competition, or another factor of your business.
4. Positioning
Position yourself in the market based on your unique value proposition, what you bring to the table that’s unique compared to others. Also, position yourself based on your market research and SWOT analysis as these have a role in how your business stands and performs in the market.
Use what you’ve learned and put it into action to effectively position your business for success. This will give you the best results for your marketing plan based on your analysis rather than randomly marketing and positioning your business.
Knowing the 4 P’s of marketing as it pertains to your business is helpful, ending guess work and delivering insights for your marketing plan. Using the 4 P’s helps incorporate successful marketing activities for your business into your marketing plan. It’s in your best interest to create and implement a marketing plan to see exponential growth and get the edge that your business is looking for. Now that you know the scope of a marketing plan, create one for your own business and watch the results before your eyes.