Business Fitness Digital Marketing

How do you create a marketing plan for a small business?

If we think of business in its three essential components: Marketing, Production, and Operations. The main mistake that most of us entrepreneurs make is to focus all our efforts on the wrong part of the business.

In order of importance, especially in the beginning of our business, the effort dedicated to Operation must correspond to 5% of all activity, Production must be 15%, and the remaining 80% corresponds to marketing. But why? No matter how good your product or service is, or if you are an expert managing your business. If nobody knows your products or services, then you will lack sales, and, if you do not have consistent sales, you simply do not have a business.

Marketing is a critical piece of the entire enterprise. It will allow you to connect with customers, create relationships, and transmit the message that will enable you to make sales and generate a flow of cash towards the business.

Without marketing, there are no sales.

So, where do we start?

GOAL SETTING

Once we have analyzed the situation, we are ready to set our goals realistically. To correctly set the objectives in our marketing plan, we have to follow the following guidelines:

-The targets must be adequate and consistent, it is useless to set unattainable goals, the only thing we can achieve with this is demotivation.

-The objectives must be clearly defined so that they cannot induce any error.

-Defined concretely. Specific objectives by business units, geographical areas, products, etc.

-It is necessary to set deadlines for its achievement, this will help motivate compliance.

If you want more information, you can read. Do we know how to set our marketing objectives correctly?

In every marketing plan, there are two kinds of objectives to be set, quantitative and qualitative goals. The quantitative targets express all those objectives that can be quantified, for example, sales volume, customer loyalty percentages, benefits, billing, etc. However, qualitative goals are those objectives that, due to the difficulty or high cost of quantification, are expressed qualitatively. For example: increase brand awareness or be market leaders.

MARKETING STRATEGIES

The strategies in the marketing plan define how the objectives we have set in the previous stage will be achieved.

– Portfolio strategy: Make strategic decisions about our product portfolio and to prioritize the investment of resources depending on the importance of achieving these over the objectives.

– Segmentation strategy: we cannot consider the market as a unit and try to satisfy all its members with the same offer. It is necessary to divide the market into groups with similar characteristics and needs. This way, we will optimize our marketing resources. There are four main variables to segment our market: geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral. In the blog, you can find more information about market segmentation in: “market segmentation, concept, and approach.”

– Positioning strategy: positioning is the space that the product or service occupies in the minds of consumers regarding the competition. We can establish positions based on product characteristics, quality-price, or lifestyles. To create a positioning strategy it is necessary to answer specific questions first: how do consumers perceive our competition? What attributes do customers value? What is our current positioning? What positioning do we want to achieve? The means necessary for it?

-MIX Marketing: at this point, we have to make strategic decisions about the famous 4Ps of marketing: product, price, distribution, and communication. The 4Ps must work together and must be consistent with each other.

THE ACTION PLAN

We are in the most operational stage of the marketing plan. This tactical part of the plan helps us carry out marketing strategies to meet the objectives set.

-Actions on products: modifications or changes in packaging, product launches or modifications, brand development, including services.

-Actions on prices: price modifications, discounts, financing, etc.

-Actions on sales and distribution: modification of distribution channels, renegotiate conditions with wholesalers, improvements in delivery times, increase or decrease the sales force, expand or reduce sales areas, etc.

-Actions on communication: advertising, sales promotion, public relations, direct marketing.

SUPERVISION

Periodic meetings, the scorecard, and Key Performance Indicators are usually the most commonly used measures for tracking. There is no use in a marketing plan if we do not record its implementation and do not correct the unforeseen events that may arise.

If you would like to know more, contact us.