Creating your 6 month marketing plan

Many marketing plans are set for a year or more, but if you are just starting a new business, then six months is perfect to start with.But where do you start?Here is an outline for setting up your marketing plan.

Following this outline will give you the most for your advertising dollars.Make sure you are including all of the large and small aspects of marketing.There are four P's of marketing strategies: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.

You will start by doing a marketing audit.This consists of figuring out what your target market is.Make sure that you have all of the details of your market.Don't forget to cover where they live and work, what they do for a living, their level of income and education, as well as their sex and age.

Knowing all of these will help you to get the heart of your market, where you are going to be the most profitable.If you aren't sure how to find your target market there are companies that will do all of the work for you.

Next take a good look at your competition.Take into account the product demand, where you will find your nearest competition, how well your competition is doing, their strengths and weaknesses, their pricing strategy, what is the similar and different between you and what you have unique to offer.

Use this to figure out how you can do better in the rest of your strategies.You will be able to determine what you have to do to rise above your competition in product, price, place, and promotion.

Go over your product with your marketing team.Talk more in depth about what you have to offer.Look at what you have without comparison to the competition for a change.

Make a marketing budget.This will need to include costs for producing and advertising.Make sure you include all of the costs, it can be a costly mistake to forget something.Some businesses set their budget as a percentage of their profits, others make a set amount, and especially new business owners just set it at as much as they can afford.Having this decided will bring you into your next step, deciding location.

Where you are going to market is going to be affected by your target market.Go over the advantages and disadvantages of each media type.Write a description of where you think your target market will pick up the most information.

Come up with a pricing strategy.Decide what techniques you will use, where the competition is positioned, price lining, what retail costs and prices are, material costs, labor costs, and overhead.This will tell you exactly where you are placing the money in your marketing budget.

Make sure you have an effective promotional strategy.Are you using all of the right medias: print, radio, television, business cards, networking, and memorabilia.These all can affect different parts of your market.You will find over time which ones will work best for your business.

Develop your marketing plan with strategies and objectives.Make sure that you have goals set, without goals you are already where you plan to be.Each objective should have an over all statement and then ways you are going to get to the over all objective.

At the end of your six month plan, it is time to reevaluate your strategies and make the necessary changes.There may also be a budget change after that time, if you have had a successful marketing plan.