The marketing plan: Create your marketing concept

In recent articles, you have dealt extensively with the marketing mix and the 4 P's of marketing mix . Based on your considerations, it is now your job to develop a marketing plan. In this article, I'll show you how a marketing plan should be structured and what to look for.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan, sometimes referred to as a marketing concept, is a guide for your company to successfully lead it into the future. Roughly speaking, describe in a marketing plan the current situation, your goals and the path to it. In this planning, you include the 4 P's from your marketing mix . In order to achieve the objectives, both short-, medium- and long-term sales plans, as well as action plans, action plans and implementation plans should be drawn up in the context of marketing planning . Marketing planning is a systematic process of understanding the current market situation and solving future market problems.

Read more : Core concepts of marketing and their importance in developing a marketing plan.

Construction and planning

Based on these requirements, it is possible to deduce how a marketing plan should be structured. Basically, this is similar to the advertising plan and has a similar structure:

1. Analysis actual situation

The first step is to analyze your current situation. In other words, where does your company stand compared to its competitors? What strengths and weaknesses do your products or services have? Next, do a market analysis. Describe the current market situation, which opportunities and threats exist. But also what trends are opening up for the future. This includes a customer analysis. This is understood as the success factors from the customer's point of view, that is, why customers buy your product.

2. Objective with key figures

The second step is to set your goals. There are operational and strategic goals, ie short and long-term goals. It is important that you describe your goals as concrete as possible. You must be verifiable afterwards.

2 simple examples of concrete objectives:

"Total revenue should increase by 20% in the first quarter of 2016." (operational target)

"By 2020, our market share should be 15%." (Strategic goal)

Your goals do not always have something directly to do with sales and profits. You should also formulate quality or customer-related goals.

3. Strategy selection and implementation

Next, determine your strategies for achieving your goals. Frequently it is divided into 4 groups. Competitive strategies are measures that give you a competitive advantage. In the portfolio strategy , you focus on those product groups that are particularly profitable. The positioning strategy aims to take a specific position on the market, for example, that customers value your product quality reasons particularly. An innovation strategy is appropriate when your company is an innovator in a particular field. However, it is more suitable for long-term goals.

Then you decide how the individual strategies should be implemented. Basically, this is about how you divide your marketing budget into marketing tools and what contribution the individual instruments (product, price, distribution and communication) make to achieving your goals.

Read more: Product positioning strategies and their use for the brand success

4. Success control

As a last step, perform a performance review. Of course, this is only possible if, as recommended in step 2, you have set specific goals. The success check is not a one-time affair. Even while your actions are in progress, you should keep checking your marketing tools to be able to take corrective action if necessary. Find out what helped achieve your goals and where there were problems. This knowledge will help you in later marketing planning.

Conclusion

Take your time for your marketing plan ! Especially small businesses are rarely systematic. Often, a marketing plan looks like this: An ad in the local press, a flyer and a few Google Adwords ads. Customer wishes, competition analysis, changed market situation, etc. are usually not considered. All the greater is then the disappointment, if such marketing campaigns fizzle ineffective. Take this task seriously! Only then can you really achieve your goals.

An important building block in the marketing plan is the marketing budget . What you should look for and how you determine that, I'll show you in the next article.