How to Write A Marketing Plan For Your Business? Here are the steps to write a marketing plan for your business:
Research
As a starting or running an effective business, you often need to step back and take a good hard look at the entire industry to see where you fit in and how your market research will come in handy. It helps you stay on top of customer needs, which can also help you define a direction for your business.
For a better understanding of your market, your customers and to identify the products/services they require, it’s necessary to conduct market research.
Market research involves learning about your:
- Customers
- Competitors
- Industry
A market research allows you to answer questions like:
- What are the demographics of my target audience?
- What are their interests and buying habits?
- How is the industry? How big is it? Is it growing, or shrinking? What are the average numbers in this industry? (number of businesses, average margin percentage, average break-even points, etc).
- How my competitors are doing business?
- What are competitors’ strengths and weaknesses?
- What are my strenghts and weaknesses?
- What problems can I help solve?
- How can I best connect with my target customers?
Segmantation and Market Analyis
List and describe target or niche markets. In this section, list and describe potential groups of users or clients. After you create the list, identify various segments of a market. Segments can include specific types of people, demographics, locations, etc.
Strategy
It is very important to describe how you’ll attract and retain customers. You also need to describe how your sales process works.
With your budget in place, you can begin to define specific marketing strategies that will address your goals, reach your target audience and build your client base.
Each strategy should be related to a specific goal and should be made up of numerous actions.
Some examples of marketing strategies are:
- Social media advertising,
- Search engine optimization,
- Word of mouth,
- Blogging,
- Print ads, flyers,
- YouTube videos,
- Webinars,
- Networking events,
- Radio, Television ads, etc.
Implementation
After setting up your marketing strategies, you need to Develop an implementation schedule that shows which marketing actions will be done when and by whom. The schedule should also include the cost of each marketing action.