MARKETING PLAN

Introduction

People who buy your products and services need information. Promotion and advertising is the method by which you put information about your products and services in the hands and minds of your customer. Using a shotgun approach or promoting your business to everyone, is always the most expensive and often least effective. A successful marketing plan will have a laser focus on prospective profitable customers.

This is a step-by-step method to discover and organize information into a successful marketing plan. It will assist you in:

This discovery process assists you in gathering market information and deciding which way, is the best way, for you to do business. This is achieved by a systematic discovery process within the following topics:

Discussion will conclude by describing how to successfully implement a marketing plan and obtain additional resources as needed.

Products, Services, Product Lines, Service Lines, Product Groupings, Service Groupings

Most businesses provide services or offer a mixture of products and services to their customers. For ease of reading, understanding and reference, this document will refer to products, services, product lines, service lines, product groupings and service groupings as a product or products.

Your Business Market

Describe the main products and services of your business.

Describe your business's main product(s) as if the person you are describing it to is hearing it or seeing it for the first time.

What geographic area will your business serve?

How far will people travel to get to your place of business or how far will you be able to transport your product / service to the customer? Describe travel in terms of time and distance. You can describe the geographic area using the following methods:

Identify your competitors.

How many competitors are there in the area? A competitor is a business that sells a product or service that is the same or can serve as an alternative to your product or service.

You can find this information by looking through the following references and web sites:

Usually a fee for service or subscription is required:

• Dun & Bradstreet
• Harris Infosource
• Thomas Register
• Hoover's
• Ask suppliers vendors and distributors for their lists of businesses
• Industry Reports from newspapers, magazines trade publications, trade associations or the internet

Describe the people who would buy the product or service.

In terms of demographic characteristics, describe the profile of the person that would buy the business's main products or services. Some common demographic characteristics:

Market Potential

How many potential customers are there in the target market that you will serve?

The target market is the number of people with the demographic characteristics that will purchase your product within the geographic area that your business will serve. You can find this information by searching web sites that provide census data. Some web sites are:

Are there enough potential customers to support your business and your competitors?

Refer to trade journals or do your own break-even financial analysis. Determine how much in sales your business will need to generate and how many potential customers it will take to support your business.

The Right Price

How will the price that you assign to the main product / service line or group influence the customer's decision to buy?

Will the price you charge for your product or service provide an adequate contribution to your overhead expenses and net income (net profit)?

Compare your product price to your competitor's product price.

Product / Service Characteristics

Provide a detailed description of the product or service. Enable the reader to have a complete understanding of the product's or service's multiple uses, functions, capacities and appearances.

What will be important to the customer as they are using the product or service, other than price? Select three product characteristics that are the greatest customer satisfiers or benefits. Describe how the customer will value the product characteristics. Examples of product characteristics that may benefit or satisfy the customer are as follows:

Compare your three product characteristics that customers appreciate against the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors.

Customer Loyalty and Repeat Business

Customer loyalty is achieved by a business when it goes beyond meeting the customer's expectations to exceeding the customer's expectations. Often it takes more than a superior main product line to succeed in exceeding the customer's expectations.

What additional benefits, product functions or services will the customer receive or experience even though it may have not been the major reason for the purchase?

Example:

Describe the additional products for sale and how they support or add to the main product or service. Examples of supporting products that are in addition to the main product line are:

What competitive advantage will additional benefits that your main products offer or additional supporting products will encourage repeat business? How does this compare to your competition?

Promotion and Advertising

What advertising media will your business use?

Given your target customer's demographic characteristics, which promotional media will reach the people most likely to buy the product or service? How many potential customers will the promotional media reach? What is the cost per potential customer for the promotional media? Compare the effectiveness and costs of a number of different types of promotional media such as:

What will be your promotional message?

How will you decide how much and what information people need to know in order to make a purchase? What competitive advantages should you be promoting?

Is the promotional message designed to:

Communicate to the type of the person (according to demographic characteristics) that will make the decision to purchase the product?