Marketing plans are used to determine the intended scope, cost, and expected return on investment. Marketing plans also provide a blueprint for current market conditions and how they compare with trends over recent years.
Traditional marketing plans are an essential part of any small business model and are easy to use once they understand their role.
Here's what your traditional marketing plan should be:
1. Initiatives
The initiatives section of the selling setup ought to embody each technique you propose to use to push the business or product in question.
Initiatives should be identified and detailed with information such as when a particular ad or event is running, why it is implemented and the partnerships involved if any. Once you've developed your initiatives, you can get a better understanding of what your marketing requires and when to start working on each component
2. Cost and funding
The costs of each initiative must be calculated and clearly placed in monthly and annual expenses. This cost calendar helps you allocate the necessary funds in advance so there are no surprises when invoices are due. It also allows you to add, subtract, increase or reduce any initiatives that may be too expensive for business.
If you plan to have industry partners or suppliers to help with costs and engage in joint ventures on the marketing front, their contributions should be included as additional funding. Always welcome additional funding, because it helps make your final profits, and if you have an internal marketing team and spend wisely, it can be a viable secondary source of income for the company.
3. RoI
Expectations may be the most important information required in the entire marketing plan. It's what your partners and investors will want to hear and what your future business depends on to a large extent.
Expecting a response to each marketing initiative can help you understand whether it is cost-effective and worth doing in the first place.
It can also help calculate how much revenue the company can expect to generate shortly as a result of your marketing efforts and over time will reveal the worthwhile marketing methods you can get rid of.
4. Market conditions
The market analysis includes a description of what is sold and what is not sold. It checks the impact of certain types of marketing initiatives versus others and helps you focus on what's working right now and what's best to leave off the plan.
You may have a perfectly logical idea for you, but if market analysis shows it won't float, it's best to leave it alone right now and reconsider it later when conditions adapt again.
The market conditions section of your plan is the place to view what's happening there in terms of your business and industry and to determine how your marketing plan responds to it.
5. Analysis of competitors
This is the section where your competitor's marketing efforts are listed and compared to what you've done and what you plan to do. It can help you find a weakness in the market and can also help guide you toward the most effective marketing methods.
For example, if your first competitor directs ads across the public transport system and you don't have any ads, you can either jump into battle and try to compete at the same stage or give up that part of the market and place all your efforts in a well-thought-out counter-strategy that includes highway billboards or another way to target passengers. Either way, your decision will be informed.
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