MARKETING PLAN

Even though marketing professionals often use these two terms interchangeably, marketing plans and marketing strategies differ from

one another. A marketing strategy is a set of longer term goals (and the techniques to achieve them) that you establish for the next several years. Then, your marketing plan sets out what you will achieve as part of the strategy within (usually) the next twelve months. In this module we will discuss what goes into a marketing plan.

A marketing plan is the playbook a business uses to profitably sell it's product to its target customer, as part of the marketing strategy, usually within the next year.

Why is a marketing plan essential?

Driven by strategy, your marketing plan is the execution roadmap to help you achieve your marketing goals. An effective marketing plan will help you identify your target audience and subsets thereof, determine the marketing tactics you'll use to reach them, and set realistic expectations for your efforts.

A PLAN WILL INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:

• A detailed plan of what you will do
• Where will you do it
• When and how you will implement it
• How you will track success.
  

Writing a marketing plan

There is no one way to write a marketing plan. Every company does it differently, and has differing parameters of what to include or exclude when putting one together, as well as different language for the same concepts.

Below is a guideline of common factors that are included in most marketing plans. ( Keep in mind your company might approach this slightly differently)

1. Mission Statement 

A mission statement should state the overarching goal you are trying to accomplish with the business & therefore why the brand or brands exist. It is generally summarized into one sentence and will be used to inform everything you do, including your marketing strategies, your internal processes, and how you project your company's values to the consumer.

Example: At The Fred Spirits Company, we're on a crusade to bring craft quality spirits to the masses

2. Develop buyer personas

A buyer persona details the specific qualities and traits of the customer most interested in buying your company's product or service.

Buyer persona research seeks to answer questions like this:

For Example, a luxury gin's target market may be:

• Professional men and women ages 28-45
• Living in metropolitan cities.
• They appreciate cocktails, visit high-end cocktail bars,
• Dine out 3-4 times a week in the upscale dining establishment, and cool gastropubs.
• When not drinking cocktails, they drink wine or craft beer.
• They have limited time to shop in stores, so they purchase most items online.
• They like to drink quality spirits, so understanding how something is made is essential.

The market research determines they can find target customers in:

• Gastropubs, fine dining establishments & cocktail bars
• Social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
• Subscribers to business and lifestyle media such as Forbes, Inc., Robb Report, The Atlantic, etc.

All marketing activities must align with the wants and needs of your customers. It's crucial to create a buyer persona that helps companies understand who they're targeting and where to target them in their marketing strategy.

Describing these individuals helps marketers determine which
marketing channels are best for reaching them and where they should focus their marketing dollars.

3. COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

Know your competition

Competitor research helps companies better understand how their competitors succeed in the market, where their vulnerabilities lie, and how their brand can successfully compete with existing products and services. It also helps avoid creating a product or service that's too similar to an existing one or overpricing products and services.

Marketing plans should address the competition and how the company distinguishes itself from existing brands to fill a specific need in the industry.

SWOT ANALYSIS

Completing a SWOT analysis helps you see where you fit in the competitive landscape. A SWOT analysis can help companies understand where they have an advantage and which areas to focus on to improve their marketing strategy and company.

4. PRICE ELASTICITY

Marketers research how responsive customer demand is for a product based on its prices. This research will help them determine how much they can charge for a product without losing a customer base or missing an opportunity.

Example: Dave has a "mental budget", in that he won't pay more than $40 for a bottle of gin. Sarah is happy to pay as much as $60. By having brands - or line extensions - priced both at $40 and $60, a company can potentially have both Dave and Sarah as customers, whereas without both price options, that company would lose potential customers to competitors who do offer that price.

5. CHANNEL SELECTION

A marketer will use the above research to determine which marketing channels will be the most effective and the best practices they should operate within each channel to produce the desired results.

EXAMPLES OF CHANNELS ARE:

6. MESSAGING

A brand must decide on its core messaging and ensure consistency across all channels.

i.e., Copalli Rum: Clean Rum from the heart of the rainforest. Copalli is an organic, sustainable rum made from three simple ingredients: sugar, water, and yeast.

6. BUDGET

Your marketing budget is how much you have to spend executing your marketing plan. Budgets set the boundaries for how much marketers spend on a program, ultimately determining which marketing channels they implement in a strategy.

7. MARKETING GOALS AND KPIs

The final stage of the marketing plan is to break down how you'll measure success. KPIs and goals ensure that marketing plans meet the company's expectations and provide data on what to improve in the future.

Here are examples of success measures for each of the following goals:

• ROI: What do you expect back from a financial investment, i.e., in social media ad spending & event activations, etc. Is it sales? Likes/Follows? Something else?
• Brand awareness - Did you activate generate social media followers, news coverage, mentions online, and traffic to your website?
• Leads - Did it generate any marketing-or more importantly, sales leads?
• Customer engagement - open email rate, reviews, customer interaction on social media, etc
• Brand advocacy - number of positive reviews written, social media mentions, etc.
• Customer retention - recurring revenue, upgrades, referrals

8. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

An executive summary summarizes the strategy you're about to present. Think of it like an elevator pitch condensing the top-line information from the plan.

MARKETING PLAN

Putting it all together: Your marketing plan (again, will vary depending on the brand)

Take all the elements above and put them together into your action plan.