What you need in your marketing plan

Small businesses often do not have the resources as the larger companies and they may not know exactly what goes into a marketing plan. If you are new to the business world, here is an easy guide to follow that will help you develop a good marketing plan:

Company Goals
One of the biggest chunks of your marketing plan is your company goals. You must include the company mission statement in your marketing plan so you can figure out exactly what you want to achieve. You also need to include a little background information about your company like what campaigns you have done in the past and if they have been successful.

Budget and Projections
You cannot create a marketing strategy without knowing what your budget is. How much money can you afford to spend on product design and creation? What about the cost to market the product to your audience and then ship it to them? Not only do you need good numbers on how much it will cost, you also need to project how much time will go into your marketing plan. Always leave a section where you can fill in the blanks with current numbers to track your progress.

Strategy
Every good marketing plan has a strategy on how you plan to achieve your goals. There are a number of factors that will go into your strategy including your target audience, competitors, and employees. Always have a good outline of the different factors that could impact your marketing plan in some way.

Competitors
You need to clearly define who you are competing against. Provide as much detail as you can about your competitors, this way you can create different strategies for each one. Compare your company to your competitors, this way you can see where you are lacking and how you can improve. You also need to highlight the areas where your company goes above and beyond your competitors.

Price
Pricing too high excludes some people while pricing too low will exclude others. How can you come up with a good price for your product or service? Take a look at the value that comes with your product or service and do a survey of your customers to find out exactly how much they would be willing to pay for it. Make sure what you offer your customer is different from your competitors because it has a higher value.

Position Statement
The position statement is where you define the campaign with a single statement. You don't need to make this long, just a quick one-liner about your plan. For some companies, the position statement ends up turning into a great marketing catch-phrase for your campaign.

Objective
The objectives for your marketing campaign will discuss your target audience and how you plan to measure them. This could be simple things like conducting phone surveys or direct mail pieces to gain feedback. It could also include measuring your web site traffic and figuring out how many "new hits" you receive as a result of the campaign.

Analysis
Throughout the entire campaign, you need to leave an area where you analyze the progress of the campaign. How can you tell if you are getting new customers or increasing the sales of the existing ones? Try using different promotional codes for your customers, this is a simple way to track your customers and figure out which ones are new.

Appendix
Finally, your marketing plan needs to have an appendix of information about your suppliers, competitors, and big customers. You need to include all of your sub-contractors and the pricing structure you have with each of them. This is a great way to monitor your customers and find out which vendors are charging too much money for supplies.