Commercial Ink - Strategic Marketing Plan

Strategic Marketing Plan

Many people think of marketing strictly in terms of advertising and public relations. But the truth is, it is so much more than that. Marketing encompasses everything from understanding the marketing in which you are selling your product or service, to researching and choosing the specific tactics you will use to reach that market. Marketing is essential to business and that is why it is important to create and implement a strategic marketing plan. Doing this will help you better understand your business and your customers. So what is a strategic marketing plan? Well, a typical marketing plan has 5 sections:

1. Summary/Overview

2. Situation Analysis or SWOT analysis.
In this section, you will be answering the questions: Who will your potential customers be? Who are your competitors? Also, you will want to include a realistic assessment of your business that includes how you plan to overcome your weaknesses and threats.

3. Marketing Strategy.
Here you will set goals for your business. These goals must be realistic, achievable, and measurable.

4. Marketing Tactics.
This is where you will explain how you plan to carry out and achieve the goals made in section 3.

5. Marketing Budget/Timeline.
Summarize costs and plan how to budget your time.

Having a marketing plan will help catapult your business in the right direction. It will force you to take a good look at your company and see where you stand within your market. It is also helpful to develop a type of competitive advantage. Three major competitive advantages that you may find your business leads the industry in are:

1. Cost Leadership.
Advantage you obtain through being able to produce the same quality products and services as your competitors but at a substantially lower price.

2. Differentiation.
Creating a product or service that is considered unique; one that no one else has.

3. Niche.
A niche product generally focuses on a certain small more focused area of the market. The reason this can be profitable is because you have little or no competitors.

Creating a marketing plan will help you and your company set goals to achieve. It will make the process of marketing a bit easier if you have some guidelines to abide by. The most important thing to remember though is to make all goals realistic. Creating and implementing unrealistic goals will just set doubt in employee's minds and begin your new marketing plan with a rocky start.

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