MARKETING PLAN
FOR
[ENTER YOUR BUSINESS NAME HERE]
[ENTER THE PERIOD IN WHICH THIS PLAN
IS VALID]
[MONTH, YEAR]
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
[Complete
your Executive Summary last, and, as the name implies, this section merely summarizes
each of the other sections of your marketing plan. Your Executive Summary will
be helpful in giving yourself and other readers (e.g., employees, financiers,
investors, advisors, etc.) an overview of your plan.]
SECTION 1: SITUATION ANALYSIS
This introductory section contains an
overview of your situation as it exists today. It is a description of where you
are at the moment with respect to product offer, customer size, target markets,
sales volumes, profitability, staff levels and other business resources, the
nature of the general environment – economic, social, technological or
political.
There are a number of forces within the environment to consider such as;
- Market forces (economic, political, legal, technological forces – include in video) likely to affect your business.
- A detailed competitor analysis
- Consumer behaviour and product use patterns
- Situation of your company - the product range, finances, processes, technology, costs, and personnel.
- Sales policy, distribution channels used, and publicity and promotional activities
- A description of your target market and how you intend to position your products for competitive advantage,
- Details of buying patterns i.e.
o
Who buys?
o
Why do they buy?
o
When do they buy?
o
Where do they buy?
o
How do they buy?
o
How much do they buy?
o
How often do they buy?
This section brings in all of your previous
activity in market research and environmental scanning, segmentation, targeting
and positioning. It should also keep in mind current achievements as far as
brand value.
SWOT
Analysis
After a description of your
situation, draw a SWOT diagram showing your key strengths which you wish to
consolidate, the weaknesses you wish to eliminate, the opportunities in the environment
that you wish to take advantage of, and the threats that you must avoid or
counter.
SECTION 2: MARKETING OBJECTIVES
This section explains where you want to go as a
business. It spells out the marketing objectives that you want to achieve. The
key is to make your goals realistic and measurable so that you can easily
evaluate your performance at the end of a specified period.
A SMART objective would be: ‘We intend to increase our market share by
10% in the next 1 year in the Kenyan market’.
This kind of objective is SMART because it is:
·
Specific- growth is expected on the variable – market
share in the Kenyan market
·
Measurable – the growth is expected to be 10%
·
Attainable – this is achievable with the resources
available
·
Realistic – the target has been set knowing the status
of the business environment – competition levels, spending patterns, etc.
·
Time-bound – this goal will be achieved by the end of
the year.
It is also at this point that you
may need to make a sales forecast of how much you hope to sell over a certain
period of time. To assist you in this exercise, use the forecast spreadsheet
available as a downloadable tool from the resources site.
SECTION 3: MARKETING STRATEGY
The marketing strategy section will make
up the bulk of your plan, because you need to give an overview of your
marketing strategies and explain each of the corresponding tactics you'll
employ to execute them.
This section of your marketing
plan is based mainly on the marketing mix elements -
Product strategy: List your products here and for
each, the Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Having a strong unique selling proposition (USP) is of
critical importance as it distinguishes your company from competitors.
Pricing strategy: In this section of your marketing plan, explain pricing
strategy - will you sell your product at the same price as competitors, at a
higher price than competitors or below the price of your competitors? Whichever
option you choose, you must justify why. The pricing strategy needs to answer
some key questions including:
·
What is the cost of your product or
service? Make sure you include all your fixed and variable costs when you're
calculating this; the cost of labor and materials are obvious, but you may also
need to include freight costs, administrative costs, and/or selling costs, for
example.
·
How does the pricing of your product or
service compare to the market price of similar products or services?
·
Explain how the pricing of your product or
service is competitive. For instance, if the price you plan to charge is lower,
why are you able to do this? If it's higher, why would your customer be willing
to pay more?
What kind of ROI (Return On Investment) are you expecting
with this pricing strategy, and within what time frame?
Distribution strategy: Your distribution section details how customers will buy
from you. For example, will customers purchase directly from you on your
website? Will they buy from distributors or other retailers? Think through
different ways in which you might be able to reach customers and document them
in this section of your marketing plan.
Therefore at this point, outline all the different companies, people
and/or technologies that will be involved in the process of getting your
product or service to your customer.
Other areas you may need to address here are:
·
What are the costs associated
with distribution?
·
What are the delivery terms?
·
What methods of payment will
customers be able to use?
·
What credit terms will
customers be offered? If you will offer discounts for early payment or impose
penalties for late payment, they should be mentioned in this part of your
marketing plan.
·
What types of salespeople will
be involved (commissioned salespeople, product demonstrators, telephone
solicitors, etc.)?Describe your expectations of these salespeople and how sales
effectiveness will be measured.
·
Describe the incentives
salespeople will be offered to encourage their achievements (such as getting
new accounts, the most orders, etc.).
Process Strategy
Process strategy represents the buying experience the
customer gets when they buy your product or service. For example, the way a
meal is prepared, presented and served in a restaurant and how long all this
takes may leave a customer quite delighted with the experience at the
restaurant or unhappy. Or the reaction of a firm to a complaint by their
customer may leave the customer either more frustrated or quite relieved that
his problem has been resolved quickly and well. A poor process therefore can
undermine the other elements of the marketing mix.
With respect to Café Paradise’s objective, since they are in the service
industry, they must work out their process chart to show the process of
delivering meals to corporate clients. For instance-the following process could
be adopted:
·
By 10.00 am, each day each corporate staff who wishes to be served with a
meal at lunch time, is given a slip to tick their preferred meal as per the
menu for the day
·
The slips are picked by 11.00am and delivered to the restaurant’s outside
catering manager.
·
The meals are ready by 11.30am, and packing of the orders commences.
Meals are packed using special material to preserve the meals well.
·
Pre-ordered for meals are then delivered to the clients by 1.00pm.
Promotion strategy
The
promotions section is one of the most important sections of your marketing plan
and details how you will reach and communicate with your customers.
There are numerous promotional tactics, such as
television/newspaper/radio ads, sales promotions, trade show marketing, press
releases, online advertising, and event marketing.
In this section of your marketing plan, consider each of
these alternatives and decide which ones will most effectively allow you to
reach your target customers.
Other promotional activities to think about are:
·
Your Offers: Offers are special deals you put together to secure more new
customers and drive past customers back to you. Offers may include free trials,
money-back guarantees, packages (e.g., combining different products and/or
services) and discount offers. Such activities, spread out throughout the year
will generally cause your customer base to grow more rapidly.
·
Marketing Materials: Your marketing materials are
the collateral you use to promote your business to current and prospective customers.
Among others, they include your website, print brochures, business cards, and
catalogs. Identify which marketing materials you have completed and which you
need created or re-done in this section of your plan.
·
Online Marketing: Like it or not, most
customers go online these days to find and/or review new products and/or
services to purchase. As such, having the right online marketing strategy can
help you secure new customers and gain competitive advantage.
The four key components to your online marketing strategy
are as follows:
1. Keyword Strategy: identify what
keywords you would like to optimize your website for.
2. Search Engine
Optimization Strategy: document updates you will make to your website so it shows
up more prominently for your top keywords.
3. Paid Online
Advertising Strategy: write down the online advertising programs you will use to
reach target customers.
4. Social Media
Strategy:
document how you will use social media websites to attract customers.
For a successful digital marketing strategy, you need to first define your objectives. Look
at a target audience and identify if they can be reached through any digital
platforms. Consider;
·
What sites would they visit online?
·
What do they do online? Do they buy online?
·
What tools do they use? Email? Social media?
·
So, how will you reach them on these digital platforms?
Once you’ve identified your audience and platforms, you’ll need to set
the resources needed for digital campaigns – including employee skills, time
and budget for any paid campaigns. When it comes to digital marketing, content
is critical - what you say and how it’s said – think about building a
content plan with key messages and timelines.
There are many tools online to help you implement your
strategy including social media marketing, mobile messaging platforms, email
systems or paid online advertising.
Whichever tool you use will
need to be laid out in your action plan to lay out key tactics, people, budget,
timelines and expected outcomes.
·
Referral Strategy: A strong customer referral
program could transform your success. For example, if every one of your
customers referred one new customer, your customer base would constantly grow.
However, rarely will you get such growth unless you have a formalized referral
strategy. For example, you need to determine when you will ask customers for
referrals, anything you will give them as a reward, etc. Think through the best
referral strategy for your business and document it here.
·
Retention Strategy: Too many organizations spend
too much time and energy trying to secure new customers rather than investing
in getting existing customers to buy more often. By using retention strategies
such as sending a monthly newsletter to your key customers or using a customer
loyalty program, you can increase revenues and profits by getting customers to
purchase from you more frequently over time. Identify and document ways you can
better retain customers here.
SECTION 4: ACTION PLAN – IMPLEMENTATION
In this section of your plan, you show the tasks or
tactical actions that will be used to achieve your set objectives and
strategies but in shorter periods of time.
These are more specific tasks carried out on a
daily or weekly or monthly basis which will eventually get the main objectives
to be realized. The questions that get covered in this section of your
marketing plan therefore are:
- What activities will be required in order to implement each strategy?
- Who will be responsible for which activity?
- What should each person do specifically?
- When should they do it?
- How should they do it?
- What are the resources available?
Use an implementation schedule to
capture this information. A sample is available as a downloadable tool from the
resources site.
SECTION 5: EVALUATION OF PERFORMANCE AND CONTROL
This is the last part of your
marketing plan in which you demonstrate how you will monitor the performance of
the marketing activities. Three areas
you need to address here are:
1.
Establish the performance standards: it involves setting of targets or
standards on what is to be achieved.
2. Evaluating
actual performance: records of actual performance are compared with standards
set to determine whether and how
much of a discrepancy exists – Negative discrepancy; Positive discrepancy; or No discrepancy.
3. Take
corrective action: what course of action will you take in case of a Negative
discrepancy; Positive
discrepancy; no discrepancy?
APPENDICES
In this section, put any supporting documents that
a reader may be interested in scrutinizing further. Usually, a detailed sales
forecast and budget of all the activities to be carried out will be found here.
You may also put here any drawings of products, packages
etc. that may be of interest to the reader.
SKELETAL SAMPLE
PalmGate Global
Ventures Inc
July 2016
Contents
A.
Executive Summary
B.
Summary of Background
C.
Business Environment
D.
Business Background
E.
Operations
F.
Go to Market Plan
G.
Investment
H.
Cash Flow Forecast
A.
Executive Summary
We are an IT solutions provider based in Isuokporo, Nigeria
with a well-established local and national client base. We deliver consultancy,
bespoke IT solutions, and skills transfer projects, and have a range of
e-learning courses available.
To support our national and international expansion
ambitions we are looking to make significant investment in the company
infrastructure, skills knowledge and staff resources. This will be enable us to
develop our e-learning delivery capabilities, and access new national and
international markets.
The expansion project will involve us in working closely
with specialist international sales, marketing and e-learning software
consultants to undertake comprehensive market research and build successful
commercial relationships with distributors and partners. We will also invest in
marketing activity in new markets.
Funding is sought principally to provide working capital
for this national and international expansion project.
B.
Summary of Background
PGV was established in 2008 as an IT
solutions provider. We have developed our client base, winning some national
contracts, and established our consultancy arm in 2010.
We began our skills transfer
projects at the request of clients, who wanted their staff to receive training
in the deployment of systems we had installed. These courses were subsequently
developed into e-learning content.
We have achieved Investors in People
status, are accredited by the Institution of Electronics and are Microsoft
Partners.
Clients have included The South of
England Development Agency, the Department for Work and Pensions, and XYZ
International.
C.
Business Environment
We currently have six ongoing IT solutions contracts with
local clients, and two with national clients. These are all renewable annual
contracts, with a minimum of six months left to run. We have a further two
similar contracts under negotiation.
There are two skills transfer projects being delivered
now, with a further two in development.
All of the courses we develop for clients are
subsequently re-developed for e-learning. We have a portfolio of ten now, with
a further two in development.
We are at an
advanced stage of negotiation with several potential clients in other African
countries and the Middle East.
D. Business Background
As
can be seen from the section C above, we have several new initiatives which
will shortly add to our existing income streams
Market SWOT
Analysis
Strengths
·
In –house technical expertise to
develop new products as technologies evolve.
·
Thorough knowledge of the IT
industry, an understanding of emerging technologies, and an appreciation of the
IT skills required by business.
·
We have a strong and expanding
client base;-
Six
local clients, two national clients, Contracts under negotiation, Potential
international expansion
·
Skills transfer capabilities.
·
E-learning course portfolio.
Weaknesses
·
We do not have the resources to
carry out pre-sales research to identify suitable markets
·
We do not have adequate sales and
marketing resources
·
We do not have adequate working
capital to develop and expand the business.
Opportunities
·
We have many years of technical and
management expertise, enabling us to be at the forefront of new technical
developments.
·
New development is a feature of our
business strategy
·
We have established routes to
international markets
Threats
·
We need to move quickly and innovate
continually to keep abreast of competitors
·
We have to redevelop our e-learning
content to be current with new systems
E.
Operations
We
currently have on staff;-
·
A technical Director who works with
clients on all technical aspects of their projects
·
A commercial Director who manages
all Commercial and Financial aspects of the company and seeks New Business
opportunities.
·
A tutor who delivers skills transfer
projects and develops e-learning content.
·
A
team of network technicians
·
We are actively seeking a Sales and
Marketing manager
Key
existing staff
Technical
director Ezeh Chima MCSE, COMPTIA, ten years networking experience.
Commercial
Director Mary Egenonu, BA Hons , twelve years commercial experience with a
major national company .
F.
Go to Market Plan
We have developed a range of off the shelf products which
enable us to offer a comprehensive support package to clients.
We have redeveloped our client courses as e-learning courses
and are in negotiation with a portal which will enable wider distribution of
them.
We are working with an international sales partner who has
made introductions to several potential overseas partners.
We are working with the International Trade and Investment
Department to identify target markets.
Many of our products are ready for launch into international
markets.
We are actively seeking Sales representation, both in the UK
and in export markets.
G.
Investment
Initial
finance was injected into the company by each of the directors. Ezeh Chima
injected £50k, Mary Egenonu £30K. In addition there is a government backed loan
for 5 years which now stands at £25K, and a bank overdraft of £50K
Funding
of £40K is sought for a business development project, designed to increase
demand for our off –the- shelf support packages and e-learning content
developed by PGV Ltd.
The
investment will be used for;-
UK
based research into international markets by an agency (£10K)
To
cover initial employment cost of a sales representative, who will quickly bring
in revenue to support the cost (£10K)
To
cover employment cost of an e-learning content developer, whose work will
become self-funding as it is sold (£10K).
And
to access appropriate legal and financial advice. (£10K)
Timescale
Subject
to availability of funding activity will commence as follows
UK
based agency research August 2016
Sales
representative September 2016
Content
developer September 2016
Legal
and financial advice October 2016
H.
Cash Flow Forecast
See separate document…
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