Have you got a Marketing Plan in place for 2024?
Download the Engmark 30 Minute Marketing Plan and turbocharge your business
They say that by failing to plan, you are planning to fail.
Often spoken in jest, but never truer than in marketing. But if you don’t have a marketing background, where do you start?
Maybe you are worried that it needs a lot of effort and time to do properly. Not true – it’s much more important to plan something rather than nothing at all.
So here is our quick and dirty marketing plan that won’t take too long to write, but will turbocharge your marketing effectiveness. There’s even a spreadsheet to help you put it all together that you can download from the link below.
Start with the Customer
Explore your target customer and his needs, and work out your proposition based on this rather than what you offer. And you must do this BEFORE:-
- doing any branding
- or producing a brochure
- or designing a new website
- or producing an outbound email
- or any other kind of marketing ….
The Marketing Planning Process
There are just three simple parts to my quick Marketing Plan.
- First is a written overview of your objectives,
- Second is the strategy for achieving them;
- and third is a marketing calendar that forms both your budget and a timeline for your marketing activity.
Use the overview to define your Business Objectives and Marketing Strategy:-
Business Objectives
These need to be quantified – for example income/profit/market share
- Analysis of past performance – last 3 years for example
- State the Value proposition and the benefits that accrue
- Identify the target market
- Brand identity and Niche
Marketing Strategy
List 5-10 marketing tactics
- That worked
- That you want to try
- With expected outcome
- Set a budget to invest in marketing
From these 2 elements of the marketing plan, populate the calendar with activities that will drive your business.
The Marketing Activity Calendar
The marketing calendar should become the driver of your whole commercial activity. It really important that each activity is diarised for implementation and that once its set up that you stick to it. If the unexpected happens, make the changes to the plan immediately and implement that one rigorously instead.
We’ve put together a really simple template for you to use – its an excel spreadsheet and will take about 30 minutes to kick off.