Marketing Plan: Stage 1

Marketing Plan: Stage 1

"Just looking at the picture is not conducive to a fiscally viable day"  GDW 2015.
For those of you who haven't yet had the pleasure of my most recent posts, it dawned on me that marketing was the thing that most businesses struggle with. I have decided to release some of my expertise in 15 stages. This is designed to take you through a manageable and digestible course on how to write our marketing plan and ultimately succeed! 
Sit back, grab a coffee, read and enjoy!
Section 1: Product and Purpose

Part 1:

The Art of Marketing:

Doing marketing planning which is captured in the marketing plan, is an essential organizational activity, considering the hostile and complex competitive business environment. Our ability and skills to perform profitable sales are affected by hundreds of internal and external factors that interact in a difficult way to evaluate. A marketing manager must understand and build an image upon these variables and their interactions, and must make rational decisions. Here is a great description of Marketing.  According to the Dictionary of Marketing Terms, marketing is “the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals. What does that mean to you? It means marketing encompasses everything you have to do in coming up with a needed product or service, making potential customers aware of it, making them want it, and then selling it to them. So then, is sales considered “marketing”? Is advertising “marketing”? Often, you’ll hear sales functions referred to as “marketing,” but really sales is just a part of the larger marketing process, as is advertising. In the olden days (back 30 or 40 years), marketing did consist primarily of sales. Rather than having marketing departments, companies had sales departments with an advertising manager and someone who did market research. Sometimes they added a promotions manager or hired an agency to handle advertising and promotions. Things began changing as some companies grew larger and larger and began offering many product lines that warranted having their own brand managers, market segment managers and many more specialized positions that addressed and mulled over the needs of their particular markets. The need for a marketing department began to be seen as a vital part of business. The marketing department also takes most of the blame if a product (or company) isn’t successful, regardless of whether or not the fault actually lies there.” Logically, your head of Marketing would be in charge of this effort but in many startups you don’t have someone in that position so it is probably you with the ultimate responsibility. So my dear reader, I am here to the rescue to guide you through very important part of executing your overall business plan. Planning your company’s marketing program is a process much like the one you go through in writing the business plan. You go through phases of:

• • What are you going to do with the plan?
• • What are the company’s skills, strengths and weaknesses?
• • Goal setting based on those strengths and weaknesses
• • Setting strategies for achieving your goals
• • Executing the plan
• • Putting the numbers together to back up your words. But before you dive into the plan, you should know what type of plan you are expected to write.

Part 2:

The Three Types of Marketing Plans

Most of the time when you are writing the marketing plan, it is usually something that needs to stand on its own and in other cases it might need to be incorporated into another document like a business plan. So before we dive into the executive summary, it is important to understand that there are three marketing plan types with various content and sizes. Marketing Plan

Type #1: 

The Marketing Plan for the Business Plan. In a business plan, the sales and marketing section as part and parcel to the business plan, which is true, but it is not the entire picture. The business plan essentially holds the executive summary and key components, graphics and financials that support the greater business plan. This means that the data came from somewhere.

Type #2: 

The Strategic Marketing Plan: At the strategic marketing plan level, marketers are scanning the environment, pondering what is happening and looking for emerging or robust market segments which they could consider as target markets. The outcomes of such plans are clearly identified target markets and the strategies which will meet their needs, as identified in our analysis. Marketing plan objectives are typically on the level of sales, profit, return on investment or, for the larger firm, market share.

Type #3: The Tactical Marketing Plan:  

Tactical plans, in contrast, presume the target market and marketing strategy as a given and don’t look much at the external environment. They deal with issues such as raising awareness or getting more returning customers. The main way to tell at which level you are working is whether your target market is a given or not. If you are scanning the environment, you are seeking new target markets or looking for subtle changes in your existing target markets; you are preparing a Marketing Plan. If however, you start from the premise that you know exactly who your target market is, you would then develop a range of tactics to reach them; this is a Tactical Plan. Many people mistakenly operate at the tactical level when they should be at the strategic level. For instance, suppose your product sales were poor, so you came up with a plan to advertise more. The result was an even faster decline in sales. Why? People found even faster that your product was terrible. Had a strategic marketing plan been developed, we would have determined what consumers want, compared those desires to our product and made the appropriate modifications

Sometimes it is better to start big and work your way down: There are different schools of thought on this one. The first being to write the tactical version with everything and then extract information to create the strategic and narrow further for inclusion in a business plan. The second is to write the strategic one first to focus your thoughts and have one person tighten it up for the business plan and a team expand on it so the tactical issues are worked out. This can be a problem because your financial projections might not be totally accurate and your plan will fail. I would offer taking the tactical plan and mapping out the sections with the abstracts so that all the issues are addressed, then write the strategic so there is a plan that others outside of marketing can digest and only when it is approved should it be tuned up and included in a business plan.

Now you know so let’s get started Now that you understand what a marketing plan is, its purpose and the type you should write, let’s get to the heart of the matter. In Part 3 we will discuss the Executive Summary.

Part 3:

Framing a Successful Marketing Plan

In Part 2 we talked about selecting the right type of plan to fit your needs. Now that you have decided that, let’s get into the general structure of a marketing plan. Please note that this is a proposed outline and depending on your emphasis, this structure can and might change.

• Marketing Plan Outline
• Cover Page
• Table of Content
• Situational Analysis (Market, Competitive Environment, Technological Environment, Socio-Political).
• Problems and Opportunities
• Objectives Section
•  Action Plan Section
• Financial Data
• So there you go, a basic outline. I know that putting all this together might seem daunting, especially if you are not a marketing and sales person. Fear not, that is what we are here for and from here on out we will break down each section and subsection in detail so you understand what information is required and how to get it.

Part 4:

Marketing Plan Summary.Everyone who begins the journey of writing a marketing plan usually looks at the Executive Summary section early on in the process. A Marketing Plan Summary is usually 1-3 pages long and the goal is to summarize the entire marketing and possibly sales plan into something digestible by new readers and those in other departments who want to get to the bottom line. Don’t despair, the hard work you put into the marketing plan will be useful to some people, not all of them. Each reader is trying to get something different and the executive summary is the best way to give them the big picture so they understand their part in this area of the operation.

When is the best time to write the Marketing Plan Summary? There are many schools of thought on when to write the Marketing Plan Summary, either write it first, write it along the way or write it at the end. I take a little different of an approach in that you should try and write it at the beginning and then re write it again at the end. There are two reasons for this:

• Writing it at the beginning can focus you and force you to answer questions in the shortest way possible. This is an interesting and valuable exercise for many because they work to answer many of the hard questions and because it forces you to get in the habit of getting to the point.
• Writing it at the end is great because you will revisit what you wrote and either be on track with only a little tuning required or most likely will roll your eyes and see how far off you were and really have a much easier time tuning the summary up to make it an amazing Executive Summary

What are the overall components of the Marketing Plan Summary? Generally, you need to write 2-3 sentences MAX on each of the following sections: Company description of what you are doing

• Problem and Opportunity
• Your products and/or services that address the problem and take advantage of the opportunity
• Money You Need and What it will be used for (this is if the summary is targeted at investors)
• The market and your customer
• The Competition and Your Differentiates (how you will kick the competitor’s butt)
• Your current Marketing and Sales (if you have them)
• Your Management Team (If they are an A-Grade team this might be further up) Current Business Operations (if you are an existing business)
• 3-5 Year financial projections and plans (How much have you made, how much will you make and if you are looking for investment, how you will use it) – This includes a small table of numbers in addition to the 2-3 sentences.

What makes a Executive Summary that stands out from other businesses? There are many well written Executive Summaries out there that have never been funded or missed the market or for whatever reason never got off the ground. But what makes an Executive Summary “awesome”? Here are six key things to make it “awesome"

• BE focused and clearly state what you do -Too many businesses, especially startups try and “boil the ocean” making you look like you are all over the place and will not be able to execute successfully.
• BE a business that solves a problem and not a solution in search of one You might have an awesome “widget” but if people don’t need it or companies can live without it, why are you starting a business?
• BE strong and positive with your language – This is not a time to be passive. From potential investors looking to give you money to those people willing to join the team, people must know that you ”are” going to execute, not “may” or “might” do something.
• DON’T cut and paste – Read the sections and extract the best and write a new concise section
• DON’T use Jargon – Most industries have acronyms or buzz words that are neat and catchy. One or two that make a point are fine but if your engineer is writing the business plan, don’t get all geeky on the solution. Remember, the Executive Summary is about telling someone the time, not how the watch works. The business plan will have plenty of places for that type of content.
• Write an “Executive Summary” of the Executive Summary – Most people have very short attention spans and once you are done the Executive Summary you should try and compose a 2-3 sentence summary at the top that gets all the critical elements in so that people really want to read the rest and get excited about reading the entire business plan.

Part 5: Understanding Your Market

The Situational Analysis is designed to take a snapshot of where things stand at the time the plan is presented. The Situational Analysis is probably one of the hardest sections you will write because you are essentially laying out how the product will function in various environments and how it will be perceived in the marketplace.

In many marketing plans, the first section could be the product analysis. If you already have existing products/services you should start with this so that you provide a “lay of the land” for readers not familiar with where you are at with your current product(s) and/or service(s). That section covers the product attributes, current pricing, current distribution and services offered. This should be about a page or two in length. For the purposes of this Marketing Plan series we will assume you are a new company and dive straight into defining the market. That is why the first part of the situational analysis is called the “Market Analysis”. This subsection of the situation analysis section should be about two to four pages in length and provides actionable information on selling to target buyers and stimulating purchases or usage by the ultimate end users. Key questions answered in this subsection include: description of target buyers or end users in demographic, psychographic, and lifestyle terms target buyer/end user wants, needs, attitudes, and perceptions of category products and services where target buyers/end users are located and how to reach them, which segments of the total market or category are growing or declining and why. You will need to tell the story in a way that makes sense to you and your readers so the following outline should be arranged as you see fit:

• Target Market Approach: Start with a description of your total potential market (your potential customers).Present a general strategy that is used to reach targeted customers that might include a mass market or segmentation approach. Describe the needs/benefits sought by market, the product usage, the positioning and what people’s attitudes are regarding the product you are selling and the product category in general.
• Target Market Profile(s): Create and describe the demographic/psycho-graphic profile(s) of the market including elements such as gender, income, age, occupation, education, family life cycle, geographic region, lifestyle, attitudes, purchasing characteristics, etc.
• Target Market Motivations: Since you know the profile(s) within your target market you need to explain what motivates them to buy your products/services. Begin by describing how your product/service satisfies the needs of this market. Follow up with describing the particular customers that you will target. Expand into the size of your total potential market (number of potential customers), and then drill down into your target market so that you can make the motivational case you set out to in the first place.
• Target Market Purchasing Strategy: You have the market explained, the target profiles done, the market motivations are worked out, now how are people going buy your amazingly cool new widget? Well, you need to detail that out in your purchasing strategy. First, you will need to explain how the target market makes their purchases. Then explain what is involved in the decision-making process and the timeline for the purchase (is it an impulse buy or something that takes an extended period of time). Finally you will cover who influences and then makes the purchase.
• Target Market Growth Strategy: To wrap things up you will need to provide market size estimates but keep in mind these are estimates for the market, not for a specific product. You will need to provide size estimates for the potential market that include the largest possible market that would buy. Then you need to narrow your focus and provide estimates of size for the current target market (how many actually purchased this kind of product) and provide estimates for these growth rates. Lastly, all of this needs to be projected out for at least through the time frame for the plan (e.g., 1 year) but most likely longer (e.g., 3-5 year projections).
• A Final Thought on Numbers: Throughout all of these explanations it is critical that you need to support estimates with factual data. You can have the best laid plans with awesome projections but if you have nothing to back up your story and make your case you are just fooling yourself that your strategy is the right one.

This brings to a close of the first section. Still with me? Eyes Hurting? Brain Pounding? Maybe look at the products that I market.. Ophthalmic Lenses with specially enhanced coatings to absorb the harmful blue light that is coming from your computer screen into your retina right now...

I do hope you have read and digested all of the information in a relaxed and learned environment. I will write out the next stage of this article for your reference. The next stage will be the fun stuff... Section 2: Analysis and Competition. You lucky, lucky people. See you next time!

Thanks for reading.

Guy D Wheeler