Common business planning mistake #3 and exercise to solve it 

Lesson Details:

I: Introduction

A: How to write a business plan marketing strategy

What is a business plan? It explains how your business works and how you will make money. What is a marketing strategy? It explains how you market your product or service. A marketing strategy is part of your business plan. They are the same thing. A marketing strategy is not an ad campaign. A marketing strategy is much more. It concerns the entire picture of the marketing of your product or service. It is sometimes called an integrated marketing communications plan. It teaches how to use many aspects of marketing to reach your goals. One problem that many businesses have is that they don't know how to create a marketing strategy. Well, I am going to share with you in this article how to create a marketing strategy. Let's get started! The first step in creating a marketing strategy is to do market research. This means to learn about your customers, what people want, what they need, and what their problems are. You can also call this consumer research or competitor research. You want to know what you are up against. You want to know who your potential customers are, where they are, which ones you should target, and why they would buy your product. Market research is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle to see the big picture. If you do not perform market research, then you may waste time and money on the wrong audience. You may even waste time and money on the wrong advertising platform. If you do not perform market research, then you may waste time and money on the wrong employees. You may spend money on training employees who don't understand what the company needs. Market research is vital for your business success. Here is one example of market research: Before writing this article, I did some market research on other articles about creating a marketing strategy. I used Google Ad Words Keyword Tool to discover what words people used when searching for information related to this topic. I learned that people searched for things like "how to create a marketing strategy" and "marketing strategy planning." So these are some keywords that I used in my article. I also looked at the top results for Google Search Engine Marketing (SEM) for these words and researched them so I could create content that was helpful to my readers. That was some more market research that I did before writing my article on creating a marketing strategy. The next step in creating a marketing strategy is to create some goals for your business. Then you want to figure out how you will reach those goals. For example, let's say that your goal is to increase profits by 10% next year. How will you do it? Will it be through sales? Or will it be through expenses? Is there anything else that you can do like raise prices or improve customer service? Whatever it takes to reach your goals, think about it now so you can come up with ideas later on down the road. Next write out all of the ideas that you can think of to help you reach your goals. Now take these ideas and brainstorm them into categories called sub-goals. For example, if your goal is to increase profits by 10%, then sub-goals could include increasing sales by 10%, reducing costs by 10%, or increasing prices by 10%. Another example might be if your goal is to save $10,000 every month so you can afford to hire an employee, then sub-goals could include reducing expenses by $5,000 per month, earning $1,000 per month in extra income, and cutting costs another $2,000 per month by using cheaper supplies, cheaper contractors, etc. Once you have completed this process, then you are ready to create your marketing strategy! When you are creating your marketing strategy, you need to start by thinking about your customers' needs and wants. Then think about their problems that your product or service solves for them. Next think about the kind of person who would buy from you versus someone else who sells similar products or services. Then think about why they would choose your business instead of someone else's. Brainstorm as many reasons as possible for each of these questions and try different combinations until you find the one that works best for your business. Once you have figured out who makes up your target audience, then it is time to figure out which sub-groups are most important to you. For example, maybe your parents are retired and have extra time on their hands so they are most likely looking for deals on products. Maybe young professionals are most interested in saving money so they can afford luxuries like dinner out with friends or designer clothing for their children. Maybe older adults are more concerned with saving money so they can afford necessities like groceries or utilities so they can keep warm during the winter months. Once you have figured out who makes up your target audience, then it is time to figure out how best to reach them. Should you advertise online or offline? Should you go old school and put advertisements in newspapers or magazines? Maybe radio advertising would be better since radio ads can be heard at home while people are doing chores around the house like cooking dinner or cleaning the house after work. Or maybe word of mouth marketing would be best because people like talking about their favorite brands and sharing news about new products and services with friends and family members who might also become customers too! Once you have gotten this far in creating your marketing strategy, then it is time to think about how you will reach these people with your message so they will buy from you instead of someone else! Think about what kind of message works best for reaching these people such as print advertising such as newspaper ads or magazine ads. Maybe radio advertising would be better since radio ads can be heard at home while people are doing chores around the house like cooking dinner or cleaning the house after work. Or maybe word of mouth marketing would be best because people like talking about their favorite brands and sharing news about new products and services with friends and family members who might also become customers too! This brings us to the end of our article series on how to create a marketing strategy! We hope that we have been able to teach you how to create a marketing strategy for your business! Take these strategies and apply them to your company today!
Posted by Business Planning at 8:00 AM