Marketing Plan Marketing Plan define… • A marketing plan is an operational document that outlines an advertising strategy that an organization will implement to generate leads and reach its target market. ... The functions and components of a marketing plan include the following: Market research to support pricing decisions and new market entries. Purpose of a Marketing Plan • A marketing plan can help you organize your marketing strategies and focus on achieving your goals for your company. Three phases precisely related to your customers’ purchase cycle: Before your potential customer makes a purchase. During the purchase. After your potential customer has bought and officially become a customer Questions about your business: Who do you want to reach (your target audience)? What do you mean (your message for your target audience)? How are you going to reach them (the means you will use to reach your target audience)? How are you going to capture their interest (your lead capture system)? How are you going to establish a relationship with them (your lead nurturing system)? How are you going to turn them into customers (your conversion strategy)? How will you do it to offer a world-class experience? How will you increase the value of your customers? How will you do it to be recommended (your referral program)? • The nine questions are the starting point and the backbone of everything your marketing plan should contain, and this is how the one-page marketing plan proposed by Allan Dib is structured. Step by Step guide based on the nine questions above. • Step 1: Find and analyze your target audience • The key to the success of any business often lies in what it knows about its potential customers. A business needs to know their clients perfectly including demographics, location and spending habits in order to offer them a product or service completely suited to their needs. • To do this, you can rely on the popular 5W + 1H model widely used in journalism and research: Who is your client?: Are they a private individual, a company, a man, a woman, a child, a teenager? How old are they? What does our client want?: Are they looking for an expensive or cheap product? Do they prefer quality? Are they looking for personalized attention? When do they buy?: Do they do it frequently? Do they make planned purchases or are they more spontaneous? Where is our client?: Where do they live or stay? What sites do they visit (both in the real world and online)? Why do they buy?: What needs do they have and why would they want to buy your products or services? How do they buy your product or service?: Do they buy in large quantities or individually? Do they do it online or do they prefer to go to a physical store? What payment methods do they use? Step by Step guide based on the nine questions above. • Step 2: Build your marketing message • Once you determine your target audience and create client profiles based on that audience, it’s time to create a message to get their attention. This has to be done properly since it can be the difference between reaching your audience and talking to a wall. Step by Step guide based on the nine questions above. Step 2 cont… • A message with a purpose • Every marketing message you add to your plan needs to exist to achieve a single goal. This can be anything from your potential customers contacting you, visiting your physical store, filling out a form, remembering your brand or buying a specific product or service. • In the same way that you have selected a specific target audience to focus all your efforts on, you must also select a specific goal for your message and focus on it. • Base your message on a unique sales proposition • A Unique Sales Proposition (USP), is a concept that is used to refer to the factor that differentiates your product from that of your competition when it comes to selling it. • To define your unique sales proposition, you must be clear about why your business exists (your mission) and why people should buy from you and not from your competition. For example, the mission of Microsoft, as the company itself explains on its website, is “to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more.” Step by Step guide based on the nine questions above. Step 2 cont… • Keep the medium in mind when creating the message • In his book Kotler on Marketing, Philip Kotler, with good reason, states: • The decision on the design of the message interacts with the decision of the medium [through which it will be transmitted]. • Your message and its purpose must be defined with the characteristics of the medium you choose to transmit it in order for the message to be effective. • Don’t talk only about your company and your product • Obviously, you have to present your product or service to the public to sell it, but don’t fall into the mistake of talking only about its characteristics and how good your company is. Focus on talking about the benefits it provides and how it can offer a solution to a problem or concern your potential customers face. Step by Step guide based on the nine questions above. • Step 3: Select the media or channels you will use to reach your potential customers • Based on the objectives you have defined above and the information you have gathered about your customers, including their location and behavior, choose the marketing channels that you think will best allow you to reach them. Consider your resources and then define the strategies and actions that you will use in each channel. • For this, you must also take into account the 4Ps of the marketing mix – price, product, place (distribution) and promotion Philip Kotler created the theory and defines it as “the mix of controllable marketing variables that the company uses to achieve the desired level of sales in the target market.” Step by Step guide based on the nine questions above. To define the channels and strategies to use in your marketing plan, you can classify them as follows • Online marketing channels and strategies • According to the 2019 Small Business Marketing Trends Report carried out by Keap, the three online channels and tactics that more SMEs plan to use this year are social networks (48 percent), digital advertising (23 percent) and email marketing (23 percent). Here are the main channels and tactics to consider: Blog: Content marketing Search engines: SEO and search engine advertising Other websites and apps: Display marketing, affiliate marketing E-mail: E-mail marketing Social media: Content marketing and social media advertising • Offline marketing channels and strategies • Here are the main offline channels and tactics to consider: Traditional media: Advertising or press, television and local radio appearances Stationery: Creation of flyers, brochures, guides and other publications Traditional advertising supports: Billboards, etc. Fairs and events: Participation in fairs and organization of events • Defining your marketing budget Step by Step guide based on the nine questions above. • Step 4: Define your lead capture system • A lead is a potential customer that has shown interest in your product or service. • Getting a lead’s contact details and storing them in a database is key to generating more sales. Why? As an analysis by Kissmetrics demonstrates, 96 percent of visitors who come to your website are not ready to buy immediately. They may be ready in a month or a year, but if they never hear from you again, you lose them. • There are many types of lead magnets that you can use to gather contact details from potential customers. Other examples to choose from are: Free trials for a limited time in the case of software or applications Free advice or a consultation for a service Participation in surveys to generate individual reports eBooks, guides, or video series Coupons and/or discounts Opportunities for social media contests Step by Step guide based on the nine questions above. • Step 5: Define your lead nurturing system • Once you have a database with your leads and their contact information, you have to supply them with valuable content in order to build a relationship with them that will grow into sales. • Lead nurturing is the process of ensuring that people who are vaguely interested in your product or service end up wanting it and willing to buy it. Step by Step guide based on the nine questions above. • Step 6: Define your conversion strategy • While maintaining a relationship with potential customers through valuable content is important, you have to turn to converting those potential customers into actual buyers. You can do this by building trust and showing them that your company brings them enough value to be worth buying from you and not the competition. • Here are some tips for you to build a credible image and an environment suitable for conversion: Buy a domain for your website: Do not use free domains for your website or for your email. Otherwise, your company won’t present a professional image and you will lose credibility. Add your company’s contact information on your website: Your phone, email and the address of your office or store must be included on your website even if you don’t sell or offer services in a physical way. Otherwise, your potential customers won’t be able to contact you or they may think that your company is fictitious or does not offer customer support. Avoid showing too many options or pricing plans: Two pricing plans (standard and premium) are enough, since, as a famous study by Professor Iyengar of Columbia University demonstrates, offering too many options causes a mental block in the consumer preventing them from making a purchase decision easily. Step by Step guide based on the nine questions above. Step 6 cont… Offer a specific guarantee to avoid uncertainty: Do not limit yourself by adding vague phrases like “guaranteed satisfaction” or “quality service” in your messages. Explain it precisely to convey more confidence. For example, “Our certified technicians with more than 10 years of experience will effectively solve any type of breakdown in your appliance and will call you back in 15 minutes. If we don’t fulfill any of these promises, we will refund twice the billable amount of the consultation.” Offer your customers a free trial: By doing this, you can break the sales barrier and show your potential customers that buying your product or hiring your service is worth it. This is a strategy that can dramatically increase your conversion rate. According to a study conducted by Zendesk, this can increase your conversion rate up to 30 percent. Step by Step guide based on the nine questions above. • Step 7: Define how you’ll offer a top-notch experience • Already entering the third phase (“after the purchase”) and having successfully converted potential customers into actual buyers, you have to make sure that your customers become fans of your brand so they become loyal customers who will return to buy more products or use your service again (or continuously). • Sell what your customers want but also what they need • Come up with an innovative way you sell your product or service Step by Step guide based on the nine questions above. • Step 8: Define how to increase the lifetime value of your customers • A marketing guide from Custora University defines the customer’s lifetime value (CLV) as a prediction of all the value that a business will obtain throughout a relationship with a consumer. • If you apply the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, to this concept you could say that 80 percent of your income comes from 20 percent of your customers. Although these percentages are not exactly like that, it is about identifying the customers that bring more value to your business either because they are willing to pay more, buy more frequently, recommend your services, contribute ideas or consume less resources. Once you identify them, you have to figure out how to increase their value. • There are several tactics you can use to “filter” your customers and identify which ones are the most valuable in order to increase their value. • Increase your prices • Use upselling strategies • Upselling is a sales technique that involves inducing a consumer to buy a more expensive item. • Give your customers a reason to come back • Increasing how often your customers usually buy from you is also a solid marketing strategy that you can apply to increase value. Offering them a subscription option so that each month they can receive your products or services at a more advantageous price is one way to do this. Step by Step guide based on the nine questions above. Step 8 cont… • Give your customers a reason to come back • Increasing how often your customers usually buy from you is also a solid marketing strategy that you can apply to increase value. Offering them a subscription option so that each month they can receive your products or services at a more advantageous price is one way to do this. • Measure the performance of your strategies • A marketing plan is not a static document; you have to leave room for change and adapt it constantly. From all the strategies and channels you define, there will be some that will work better and others that will work worse so it’s important to know how to measure the success of your actions to identify which ones you should keep, improve or eliminate in order to get more valuable customers. • The key performance indicators that you should look at (and analyze periodically, either monthly or weekly) are mainly the following: The number of leads Your conversion rate The average transaction value Your break-even point Step by Step guide based on the nine questions above. • Step 9: Define your referral program • Word of mouth marketing is one of the most powerful strategies to improve the positioning of a business and increase sales exponentially. According to a study by Nielsen, 92 percent of consumers believe more in the recommendations of friends and family than in advertising. • However, many entrepreneurs are waiting for this phenomenon to happen naturally as a result of the great quality of their product or service. The fact is that if you wait for positive reviews to come in on their own, it can take a long time to get results, so it’s better to take action.
