Developing Your Marketing Plan

Your marketing plan is the blueprint you’ll use to keep a log of the activities you plan to implement (and the timing of those activities) in order to generate more leads and meet your business development goals.

Begin your marketing plan by writing your top 3-5 major business goals.  For example, one goal might be “To increase top line revenue by 10% in the next twelve months.”

Then you’ll want to identify specific market segments (demographic or regional) and define each of the activities involved in achieving your goals for gaining new business within a specified amount of time. For example, if one of your market segments is “Residents that live in the 90210 zip code,” then you’ll want to write down each of the tactics you plan to use to build awareness, generate leads, and nurture them. One tactic might be to “use a direct mail postcard 6 x/year highlighting testimonials from their neighbors.” Write down each tactic you intend to use under each market segment or audience you are targeting.

For each tactic, you’ll want to make sure you estimate the likely associated cost. Using the direct mail postcard as an example again, you’ll want to estimate costs for the design, printing, and mailing to the households in that zip code. Some tactics, like posting on social media sites, may not have a “hard” cost, but will involve someone’s time, creativity, effort and energy.

Your plan should also include the identification of specific customer needs and how your company intends to address them with marketing messages. Perhaps there are new technologies or upgrades available and you need to make your current customers aware of them. How will you communicate to them? Is updating them through an invoice stuffer enough?

Finally, make sure you have assigned a responsible party for executing each of your tactics AND note how you will measure the results.

Your plan doesn’t need to be lengthy and complex. It should be a “working document” that lives and breathes and gets continually updated with new information as you learn. Once you’ve written your goals, your target audiences and the tactics (activities/promotions), cost estimates, and responsible parties, make sure you review each of your activities to double check that they directly tie back to the business goals you set forth at the outset.