What Does A Strategic Marketing Plan Look Like

Essay, Pages 9 (2013 words)

Views

127

A strategic marketing plan is a great tool for understanding your business, helping you manage it and guiding your work. A good strategy shows you how to grow profitably and what you need to do to get there.

Strategic marketing planning is the first step in developing a marketing program. It’s important because it helps you set your goals, define your audience, define your competitors, and define your value proposition.

Strategic marketing plans are also important because they guide all other activities in the organization and provide a framework for making decisions about them.

Don't use plagiarized sources. Get your custom essay on

“ What Does A Strategic Marketing Plan Look Like ”

Get custom paper

NEW! smart matching with writer

A tactical marketing plan is a detailed plan of action. This includes the tasks you will need to complete and the resources required to do so. It’s more specific than a strategic marketing plan, which provides direction for future growth over time. A tactical marketing plan can be used in conjunction with your strategic plan, or stand on its own as an actionable item.

A tactical marketing plan outlines how you will achieve your goals over a shorter timeframe compared to a strategic one (which may cover months).

It may also include smaller initiatives within other areas of your business that are necessary for achieving long-term success but don't fit into your overarching brand strategy.

An integrated marketing plan is a document that combines all the different marketing disciplines into one, including:

Marketing research - to identify customers and their needs, wants, and preferences
Strategy - how your company will meet those customer needs/wants/preferences with its product or service offerings
Branding - how you want your products or services to be perceived by customers
Communications - how you want to communicate with your customers (online, in print, by phone etc)

You’re going to want to know what you need to know.

Who is the target audience? What are their needs, wants and aspirations? What do they like, dislike, or prefer not to have?

What are the goals of this plan? Does it need to be updated often? How often will it be updated? Will there be a separate plan for each product/service offered by your company, or will they all fall under one umbrella document that covers all marketing activities at once (e.g., social media marketing)?

Additionally, ask yourself: what are my company’s strengths and weaknesses as a whole — when compared with its competitors — in terms of sales growth and customer loyalty among other areas that might affect how well we market our products/services.

The next step is to analyze the market. It's important to find out what is working in your industry and what isn't, so you can learn from others' successes and mistakes. You should also investigate your competitors—what are they doing well? What could you do better?

This is where research comes in handy. If it sounds like a lot of work, remember: It doesn't have to be done all at once! Start off by taking notes on what's happening right now (e.g., "Our top competitor has been running ads on TV that feature their newest product."). Then pick up a few books or magazines with information about your industry (e.g., "In this month's 'Computers for Dummies', they mention that people who watch Sean Hannity tend to buy more computers than average.").

Next, contact some people who know more than you do about this topic (e.g., "My friend Mark works at Best Buy; he says sales have been down lately because everyone wants an iPhone instead of buying new laptops"). Finally, use any other sources available to you online or through friends/family members (e . g . listenning t o podcasts by famous business leaders).

A value proposition is the promise you make to your customers about the benefits they will receive when buying or using your product or service. You can identify your value proposition by asking some simple questions:

What do I want customers to think of my company?
How are we different from our competitors?
What problem does our product solution solve for the customer that no one else can solve as well (or at all)?

The more clearly defined and compelling your answer, the better. Your value proposition should be concise, easy-to-remember, and easy-to-communicate (especially on social media). Once you've got it down, test how well it works in conversations with potential customers before finalizing it.

Now that you've got a clear understanding of who your customers are and what they need, it's time to turn your attention to the competition. What makes them different from you? What do they do well? How do they get their products or services in front of people who need them?

What are your competitors' strengths, weaknesses and opportunities?

Strengths: What are their biggest advantages over other companies in the same industry or sector? Do they have superior pricing or product quality compared with other players in the market (if so, why)? Are they able to offer something unique that no one else can provide (again—why)?
Weaknesses: What are their biggest drawbacks relative to other players in this market space—are there any significant liabilities that could cause serious problems down the road if left unchecked (e.g., lack of scale)? Or maybe there's something about how these companies operate that could be improved upon (e.g., inefficient distribution channels). If possible, try not just pointing out problems but also suggesting ways those issues might be resolved.

Market segmentation is a tool marketers use to identify different groups of consumers that have similar wants and needs. When you divide up your market into segments, you can create strategies specifically tailored to each group. According to MarketingSherpa, “Marketing segmentation is the process of dividing markets into homogeneous subgroups or niches based on certain characteristics such as age, gender or income level.”

Why is market segmentation important? The benefits of market segmentation include:

Allocating more resources – By dividing your target audience into segments and targeting them with specific marketing content, you can allocate more resources to reach those who are most likely to buy from you. This means that you’ll be able to develop campaigns that have a higher ROI (return on investment) and are more profitable overall.
Better understanding customers – Marketers understand their customers better by identifying their demographics, psychographics (values), psychographics (lifestyle), psychographics (personality traits). This allows them to create messaging that speaks directly at each segment’s needs while also enabling them see how they differ in order help craft unique messages for each group

Competitive position and differentiation strategies

What is the competitive position?

A company's competitive position is its unique place in the market as compared to its peers. It is often defined by how well it meets customer needs.

What is differentiation strategy?

A differentiation strategy is what you use when you want to stand out from your competitors and be known for something different or unique about your business. If a company offers a service that no other company offers, this would be considered their "unique selling proposition," or USP.

How do you know if your competition has chosen a competitive position or differentiation strategy?

If you can't find any information about the way your competitors are positioning themselves in relation to each other, this may be because they are using neither of these strategies—or that they're using both at once! In general, though, if one competitor seems particularly focused on providing value while another seems more focused on creating awareness around their brand name/logo alone (this could happen if one was selling products online while another was trying to reach out through social media influencers), then it's likely that first competitor used some form of competitive position strategy while second competitor used some form of differentiation strategy instead.

Product positioning is a strategy that marketers use to position the benefits of their products relative to the competition. It's important because it informs how you will compete with other companies. This can be done by using key words, phrases and images (called "branding") in your marketing materials; by positioning your product as being superior in some way; or by developing new features for your product or service that make it different than what others offer.

It's easy to get confused about exactly what product positioning is and isn't. Product positioning simply describes how you describe yourself or compare yourself relative to other companies' offerings - that's all! For example, consider these two versions of a statement about a restaurant:

Version A: We serve great food at reasonable prices

Version B: We serve great food at reasonable prices without any of those annoying waiters trying to rush us out!

Before you can design a marketing plan to achieve your goals, you need to clearly identify the problem or opportunity. You’ll want to do this by asking yourself two questions:

What are we doing right now?
What isn’t working as well as we want it to?

What is a marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy is a high-level plan that outlines what you will do to reach your goals. An effective strategy should be based on in-depth research and analysis, so that it can accurately reflect how your target audience thinks, what they want and how they live their lives. It also needs to take into account the strengths of your business and identify any weaknesses that may prevent you from achieving success.

A good place to start when writing your own marketing plan is by answering four questions:

Who am I selling to? – Identify who makes up your customer base and why they would buy from you (rather than one of your competitors)
Why am I selling it? – What problem does my product solve for people? Why do they need this solution now more than ever before?
How am I going to get noticed by potential customers? – How will people find out about my product/service if they don’t already know about it (i.e., where/how should I advertise)?

Financials and forecasts for sales, costs and expenses

You'll need to develop financials and forecasts for sales, costs and expenses. Your financials should include the following:

Sales forecast (in dollars) by product category or type of product
Forecasted total cost of goods sold (COGS). This is the total cost incurred by your company to manufacture products and sell them to customers.
Profit margin. Profit margin is the percentage of each sale dollar that remains after you pay for your COGS and other operating expenses such as marketing, research and development, administrative fees, rent etc. A positive profit margin means you're making money; a negative profit margin means you're losing money; a break-even point means you're breaking even--you are spending exactly as much on COGS as what's left over from each sale dollar goes towards paying those fixed costs mentioned above. The importance of developing accurate financials cannot be understated here--they form the basis for everything else in your plan including staffing needs, marketing budgets and more!

The final step in your strategic marketing plan is to summarize the important points. This can be done by listing the key initiatives, goals, and objectives that you want to accomplish. Once this is done, you will have a clear plan for moving forward with your marketing efforts.

It's important not to forget about the most important aspect of this whole process: execution! If you don't take action on what's written in your strategic marketing plan, then it's just paper with some pretty words on it.

Your marketing plan is a living document, so it’s important to keep it up-to-date. As your business grows and changes, you should revise your plan every year or two to reflect these changes. You can also use the plan as a benchmark to measure how well your strategy is performing over time and look for areas where improvements could be made. Ultimately, this process should help you achieve success in all areas of marketing by helping you find new ways to communicate with customers and understand them better than ever before!