A marketing plan is a well researched, detailed, written report; this will be available for inside or outside organization to evaluate a company. Marketing plans can be an essential document for either large corporate companies or for a start up business.
The Marketing plan
- Can help marketing personnel to look internally so that they understand the results of past marketing strategies and decisions.
- Helps to set future goals thus, giving direction for everyone in the business can understand, and support.
- For a new business it is an important component to obtain funding for a start-up business.
Reasons for creating a marketing plan
- Could be needed for part of annual planning initiative in a marketing functional area.
- Could be used for a specialized strategy when introducing something new to the company. This can include new products, new strategies for planning, or trying out a new strategy to fix an existing plan that is not working that well.
- Introduce a new business in order to obtain support to get the new business up and running.
Creating the marketing plan
- Research and planning, you need to understand your customers potential and existing and to look at what they need so you can provide those needs.
- You will also be on the lookout for areas to grow and prosper.
- You need to implement your strategies and track the progress of these strategies.
An Established business
- When creating the marketing plan you need to summarize your present situation.
- Look at your present financial results and possible future financial needs.
- You current sales figures and the trends to see where you can improve sales.
- Understanding your customer satisfaction is it on par with what you envision it should be or do you need to improve service to obtain better customer satisfaction.
- What is your market share and how can you improve it.
- The level of repeat business, all companies can improve repeat business so you need to be constantly on the lookout for ways of increasing repeat business.
The marketing plan for an existing business should be a 'blue print' that the relevant members of the team or organization can refer to when necessary it should also be updated during the year when necessary. The purpose of the marketing plan is to provide a structured approach to the business that helps the sales personnel to keep focused on the marketing strategy, and gives the marketing manager the opportunity to keep an eye on how the marketing is going and utilize ways of improving strategy if needed.