Laying It Out: 7 Components That No Marketing Plan Should Be Without

As an entrepreneur, you need to layout your vision to your marketers on how your product or service should be marketed, and you need to make sure that it is comprehensive and fully communicates to them how your plan is going to reach their target market.

 

There are some vital components you need to make sure you include in your marketing proposal.

 

I have carefully spelled out the 7 components that no marketing plan should be without, they are summarized and straight forward.

 

1. Market Research & Analysis

 

That old maxim of looking before your leap couldn’t be more true than when it comes to marketing, so this first step of your marketing proposal is something you need to do thoroughly.

 

If you don’t know who you are marketing to and what kind of product/service is selling out there, and also why it is selling, you are going to be firing without aiming. They are called a target audience for a reason.

 

2. Marketing And Financial Goals And Objectives

 

You may be looking to spend a lot of money on your marketing campaign, but you need to know what you expect to get out of it.

 

What kind of ROI do you expect to get back from this campaign that you are working on? No one is going to want to outlay more money than they are going to get back.

 

3. Marketing Mix

 

What strategies are you going to employ in order to reach your audience and then get said audience to spend their money?

 

You need to have a way to create a desire in your audience for the product or service that you are offering, and this should be firmly rooted in the research you did for the first part of this plan.

 

4. Marketing Budget

 

This is the stage where you break down the component parts of the plan and how much each part is going to cost.

 

Launching a marketing campaign with a badly worked out budget may lead to the campaign stalling and you not reaching your goal, which would be a costly mistake in terms of both time and money.

 

5. Monitoring Market Response

 

Once your marketing campaign is out there in the world how do you plan to gather data on how well it is doing?

 

You should also look into how you plan on monitoring the conversion rate of people who see the ad and those who actually respond to it, and those who become paying customers. Without this step you will not know how effective your strategy has been, and what successful action to keep in for next time.

 

Google analytics is a tool you should not overlook when it comes to data gathering.

 

6. Contingency Plan

 

You have to make sure that you are ready to respond if one part of the plan is working really well, and another is failing to do what it needs to do.

 

Having some idea of what could go wrong or right and where to look to judge this is vital.

 

7. Marketing Plan Checklist

 

So, you have everything planned out – now you need to make sure that in each step of the campaign rollout everyone is doing what they are expected to do.

 

You also need to make sure that everything is rolling out as it should and that targets are being met on schedule.

 

In Conclusion

 

Planning is everything. If you have a good plan in place you have a roadmap for how to get from point A to point B. Stick to the plan once you have it, flying blind and winging it is not a safe option.