Friday, April 22, 2005

Writing a Marketing Plan

Of course marketing matters to your organization. You know
that planning your promotional activities makes sense.
Creating a formal plan on paper might not be considered as
essential but there are definite benefits to be obtained.
Putting your marketing ideas down on paper can help to
crystallize your thoughts and help in developing an overall
strategy.

The contents of your plan

Work out where you are starting from; it is very hard to
have a goal if you do not know the starting point. Gather
information about what you are offering, what your
competitors are offering and more most importantly, what
your customers are looking for. This information may be
readily available as part of your company records.

Preparing your Tactics

Strategic Planning

Your strategic marketing plan should follow on from your
review of the organization's current position. It should
be used to focus on the overall strategy for developing the
organization's marketing, without getting bogged down in
minor details. This strategic plan should be an integral
part of the overall marketing plan so that the direction
that the organization is going in is clear.

Design a Scheme that will Bring Prosperity

As your marketing progresses, it is worthwhile having
pre-defined milestones. By setting smaller targets along
the way, you can identify, at an early stage what is
working and what is not. This is particularly important if
the tactics you are using are unusual or are new to your
company.

Writing a detailed plan is extremely important, without
a plan it is almost impossible to track your success.
Knowing what works and what doesn't work is one of the main
things that will determine your success. How can you know
whether you have been a success if you did not know what
Your aims were?

Creating a marketing plan brings benefits in several ways.
Having all the major tasks down on paper makes monitoring
of all parts of the organization's progress much simpler.