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A company without direction is adrift, without direction. And targeting is the main objective of marketing planning.
In order to create marketing strategies, it is essential to go through important steps, which force the company and the team to know relevant aspects of the business.
In this way, it is possible to create achievable goals that are extremely important to the company's strategy.
Many companies that work marketing in the wrong way, see the area only as a source of costs when, in fact, it is one of the biggest investments that can be made in the business. Fortunately, the practical example of several companies has made many entrepreneurs change their minds about this.
Marketing planning not only makes this investment possible but also makes it possible for it to occur considering the company's current situation.
It is not possible to take the planning of a large retailer and replicate it in a small company that has been in the market for a short time. But, this customization is only possible with this previous work.
In addition to promoting actions that have a positive impact on business revenue, well-structured planning allows for cost reduction.
After all, as we said, the team will not waste time creating sudden actions or investing in unprofitable agendas, since everything that is strategic will be planned in advance.
Marketing planning also allows the company to assess whether the investments made are generating the desired results, allowing the optimization of strategies for those that provide greater growth.
How to make a marketing plan?
1. Know your market and create a goal
The first step in making an efficient marketing plan is to know your niche market well.
All decisions about the actions to be taken will influence the execution of the campaign and they need to consider the current moment of this market, as well as customer needs, future trends, and how the company will position itself in the face of changes.
It is essential to carefully analyze various aspects that can influence the future of the company. This analysis can be divided into the macro environment and microenvironment.
Macro environments are general situations that affect the entire market. These can be legal, economic, political, or technological, among others. These factors generally cannot be controlled and are directly related to the country or city in which the company operates.
The micro-environment factors are directly related to the company. They can be suppliers, intermediaries, competitors, customers, etc.
Understanding this functioning is essential to determine one or more goals for the future, which should always be related to some kind of increase in market share.
But remember, before you even start doing marketing planning, that the objective must be realistic and measurable. Think of it as a process for company growth.
2. Analyze your company's position in the market
A marketing specialist will be able to help you analyze the company's positioning in the market and begin to outline strategies to achieve the objective of the marketing plan, within the given time frame.
This professional should be responsible both for creating the marketing plan, as well as for monitoring and ensuring that actions are being carried out properly and also for making changes when necessary.
However, if your company already has a marketing team, they will be able to put all of this into practice. The team will help you better understand where your business is at the moment and what it takes to get to the next level, based on company and team goals.
3. Define and know your target audience
One of the fundamental steps for the success of a marketing strategy is to know your target audience. All actions to be carried out must be aimed at people who are interested in the company, products, or services.
For this, it is necessary to know when and how the customer acquires the product, and what are their characteristics, interests, and habits, among others.
It is necessary to go beyond the basic information of age, gender, and geographic location, and understand what your customer likes to do, what subjects interest him, and where he consumes information, for example.
Creating personas can be a useful path as they are the embodiment of an ideal customer, and they must have a complete profile that addresses all aspects of a person's life, they must have a story.
That way, you can better visualize what kind of strategy can impact that person, and generate more results.
This step is crucial for customer loyalty and attracting new ones. In this way, it is also crucial to define how each planning action will be executed, in order to guarantee the best experience for your customers.
4. Define the strategies and actions to be followed
Now is the time to be creative. Get the team together and let all ideas flow, writing everything down without prejudice.
Various resources can be used in a campaign, such as guerrilla, digital, viral, inbound, and outbound marketing, as well as various channels such as social media, email marketing, blog, ads, etc.
With well-defined objectives and clarity of who your company is talking to, it is easier to define what will be done to further improve the results of the marketing team.
It is also important to innovate and to think of different things to stand out in the market. Furthermore, when a company innovates and surprises, it gains notable prominence and this makes people talk about it, which is very positive for the company's image.
Therefore, it is clear that all these actions must be thought of taking into account the costs and the proposed budget for the campaign.
As we said, planning is positive precisely for this reason, as it allows the adequacy of marketing strategies to the reality of the company at that moment, including financially. If you have difficulty, it may be interesting to enlist the help of a specialized management system.
5. Define the marketing actions execution schedule
Once you have defined which actions will be performed, you need to organize them in a logical order and determine when each will be performed. In this way, it will be possible to follow the marketing plan and monitor and analyze the results.
Thus, if an action is not generating the expected result, the professional can make the necessary corrections.
It's no use having so much work and thinking about all the actions if they are not put into practice. Therefore, it is necessary to guarantee the commitment of everyone to take everything that has been defined on paper.
An efficient schedule does not only contemplate what will be done but also all the steps prior to the action itself.
6. Execute what was planned
With everything planned and organized, it is easier to put into practice what needs to be done. Therefore, here is the practical part of planning and it is also necessary to have an efficient team that can keep up with all the demands that often happen simultaneously.
7. Monitor actions
It's no use planning everything and not following what was programmed. So it is essential that the marketer closely monitors all actions and monitors the results achieved in each of them.
In this way, if any strategy is not generating the expected result, it is necessary to rethink and create alternatives to reverse the situation.
In addition, it is very important to have metrics to track each of these goals. As we said, it is important that the objectives are tangible and measurable, the data will help to track this much better.
8. Define the channels of contact with the public
This is a very important factor in achieving the goal. Defining which channels will be used to approach and talk to the target audience to maintain a good relationship is essential to guarantee a greater amount of sales.
With this in mind, define which communication vehicles will have the best response to the plans and strategies created for a business.
However, it is also important to imagine how it is possible to innovate in each of these channels, for example, newspapers, websites, radio stations, social networks, and several other systems that guarantee contact with potential customers.
9. Know the competition
What a company most wants when preparing to enter a line of business serving a specific market niche is to surpass or at least reach the leader of that segment.
With a very well-structured marketing plan, this can become a possible action. However, first, it is necessary to have a deep knowledge of the competitors that compete with the company in the market.
In addition, by carrying out very detailed research of the competition, entrepreneurs can discover strengths, and errors in the processes and even discover the secrets that led their competitors to obtain the prominence and success that they have in the segment in which they operate.
