A marketing plan will usually be written as part of your business plan. As your business develops your marketing needs will change and you will have to develop a new marketing strategy for either a new product/service.  Writing a plan will help you to:

• Clarify what benefits your business and products offer
• Ensure that you are aiming your product at the right people
• Increase your awareness of new competition, problems of affordability and not enough new customers

The marketing plan consists of the four main components of your marketing strategy including your target market, objectives, positioning, programs, your forecasts for your main objectives and a list of your key planning assumptions. You need to determine what objectives are important to you and what marketing programs you will be using.

Important aspects such as finding market segments, determining positioning and developing communications messages are all important in the formulation of a marketing strategy.

There are several ways to improve your positioning to strength your marketing strategy:

• Improve your marketing programs – Make sure your customers perceive the value you are giving them. You may have an excellent product/service but your communications may not be persuading your customers.
• Improve your capabilities – Find the most beneficial

The marketing plan summarizes the strategy and all the programs that are designed to achieve your objectives. 

The following are useful sections to include in your marketing plan:

• A sales forecast

The question is “How much will you sell?” This is not always an easy question to answer when launching a new product and the best way to find out is to look at your competitors . Make an estimate based on a conservative prediction of how many of their customers would buy your product.  As a smaller business you will tend to use market reports to get an understanding of the size of a market and how it is developing.  It is also good to set yourself some hard, rands-and-cents objectives that you expect your plan to achieve in the first month, two months, six months and twelve months after you start your marketing campaign.  Before looking for customers in a particular market, find out whether the market is growing or standing still, seasonal and whether outside factors might affect the demand for your products.

• A client profile

Who will buy your product? Describe the type of customers that your business wants to attract and where you expect to find them.

• A competitor profile

It is important to know who your direct competitors are. What are your competitors main strengths and weaknesses? Find out about your competitors’ product range, specifications, prices, discount structure, delivery arrangements, terms of trade and how they advertise. Your marketing plan will then have to take into account what your competitors are doing, so that your marketing message offers customers something different, better and cheaper.

• A product profile

What is your core product and what are its features? Customers buy products/services to satisfy a need and that is what your business should aim to do. The same philosophy is true of every business.  How do your customers perceive the kind of product/service that you offer? What are their likes and dislikes and what features of your product /service would be most likely to make them use the business’s product?

• A distribution strategy

Is location important in the sector that you operate in? On the other hand, what are the options for delivering your product to customers? Are you close enough to your market to be able to deliver quickly and affordably? Maybe delivery could be a value-added service you can offer.

• A pricing strategy

What will people be prepared to pay? How much can you expect to sell at that price? Will this cover your direct costs plus overheads?

• A promotional strategy

How will you create an awareness and demand for your product? Consider the various ways of marketing a product, and work out the right ‘mix’ of these different options to suit your market. It is important to set clear objectives for each activity and describe how the results will be monitored.

• Marketing Budget

This should contain the costs of the marketing activity including your own time, consultants, printers, even managers and an estimation of when you will need to spend this money.

There are several ways to improve your positioning to strength your marketing strategy:

• Improve your marketing programs – Make sure your customers perceive the value you are giving them. You may have an excellent product/service but your communications may not be persuading your customers.
• Improve your capabilities – Find the benefits of highest priority to your target customer.  Make sure that your capabilities are sufficient to provide the benefits at a superior level.
• Persuade your target customer to value the benefits you are providing and where you have your strongest competitive advantage
• Add benefits that you think will be of high priority to your customer – Be sure you have sound information on what your customers want before trying this approach
• Select a different member of the decision-making unit  - Your aim should be to find a target member of the decision making unit who wants the benefits you already provide and are supported by your competitive advantages.
• Select a different target market – If your superior benefits are not of interest to your current target market , perhaps you can find another target that will appreciate them
• Restructure the entire market – If you cannot find the target market that you can win within your current segmentation scheme, then perhaps it’s time to try another way to segment the market
• Redo your situation analysis – If you unable to find a target market then maybe it’s time to rethink on whether this market is really for you. Before you depart however, you may want to re-examine your situation analysis one more time

Every  one of these actions has the potential to strengthen your marketing strategy and improve the forecasts of return such as sales, profit and cash flow.