A marketing plan creates a roadmap for future business growth. To create a good one, start with an understanding of your customers. Next, perform a marketing audit that includes SWOT analysis and competitor benchmarking. Objectives need to be created, but they must be SMART ones. Furthermore, perform customer segmentation based on strategic initiatives you’ve developed. The next steps are figuring out what opportunities you have to target new customers and creating a detailed marketing action plan. Last, monitor actions, manage the process, and measure results. Remember to set start and end dates for creating your marketing plan, otherwise it might never be completed.
Key Takeaways:
- It is important for a business to have a great marketing plan because those who do outperform their competition.
- It is important for businesses to understand their customers at a deep level before implementing a marketing plan.
- It is important for marketers to create achievable and sustainable objectives instead of general and unorganized objectives.
“Part of a marketing audit is competitor benchmarking. Really understanding what the competitors offer. The more you understand how they work, the more likely you are to be able to predict their next move. You won’t be one of these companies that says “we never saw it coming”. Tools such as Google alerts help you embed this as an automatic on-going process.”
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