Marketing plan: how to study a successful one

The marketing plan is a document that contains all the strategies and operational actions to promote a business. Here's how to do it and why.

The marketing plan is a fundamental tool through which companies can obtain a strategic and operational document , necessary for the optimal performance of communication activities. This is a fundamental step for both professionals and businesses: for this reason it is important to understand exactly what a marketing plan is, how to make one and what are the right steps to make it effective.

·         What is a marketing plan

·         When you need to create a marketing plan

·         How to develop a Marketing Plan

·         What is a marketing plan

The marketing plan is a programming and planning document with which companies carry out a complete analysis of the business, define marketing objectives and draw up a complete and clear operational strategy relating to its communication and promotion actions.

Marketing plan and marketing strategy are closely connected: the first, however, contains the strictly application formalization of all the preliminary studies and the possible practical implementations elaborated a priori. Referring to the brand or specifically created for a specific product or campaign, the marketing plan translates into immediate operational steps .

It is an integral part of a business plan and has its foundations in the digital strategy that the company proposes to implement, constituting itself as a much more practical, analytical and organizational transposition.

When you need to create a marketing plan

The corporate marketing plan can be built annually, or at closer intervals, such as half-yearly or quarterly, to follow the developments of products already started or brands already launched on the market for some time. In fact, it may be necessary to periodically create promotions or new lead generation campaigns , increase sales or promote content, even for offers already in the portfolio.

Instead, a marketing plan is indispensable when the company wishes to proceed with the launch of new products not previously present in the portfolio, or to build new campaigns that promote brand awareness , increase the visibility of a newborn brand or create attention and interest around new products or services offered.

A precise and clearly implemented plan is essential to maximize the effectiveness of the campaigns implemented and optimize their returns on investment.

How to develop a Marketing Plan

The task of developing a marketing plan is generally left to the marketing manager , who will necessarily have to work in close collaboration with the other corporate figures linked to the universe of marketing such as SEO and SEM managers or those who deal with social media. It will also have to discuss with those at macro level who are responsible for establishing company objectives and main guidelines.

Making a marketing plan is simple if you think in an organized way and try to structure a document that can be easily translated into concrete steps. Here are the main sections it should contain.

Overview

The first point to be elaborated is a general premise that clearly explains what the company's mission is, its unique selling proposition, what the objectives it aims to achieve. An overview of the company or brand in question , which helps to contextualize the work. It will also be useful to establish different lines of action depending on whether the company or product on which the marketing plan will focus is in the launch, development or full maturity phase.

Company and market analysis

The next step is a careful and in-depth analysis of the current situation that includes both market research, competition analysis, and studies on the company's contingent condition. It is of fundamental importance to have well defined in mind the characteristics of the reference market in which you operate or would like to operate, its segmentation, the economic, political and demographic context in which you move, the threats and difficulties, the trend on purchasing behavior. Any element taken from statistical surveys or from tools such as Google's Consumer Barometer can be useful to outline a precise picture of the macro universe in which you are about to throw yourself.

The competitive situation is also to be examined in detail: who are the competitors already operating, what services and products do they offer, what marketing strategies do they use? In short, it is important to define where you position yourself compared to the competition, what advantages you can boast and what disadvantages you must fight to improve.

SWOT analysis is very useful for understanding the strengths and weaknesses of a brand or company. It is an analysis of the strengths (strenght) and those of weakness (weakness), factors that are internal to the life of the company, as well as the opportunities (opportunities) and threats (threats) related to the context in which it Opera.

If you then want to build a marketing plan around a product or service, it will be useful to analyze its market trends , seasonality, the prices offered on the market, as well as the value perceived by users that will help determine how much they are willing to pay for that particular asset. Tools such as Google Trends or Analytics will be particularly useful, as will the refined web scraping techniques available today.

Goal setting

A meticulous drafting of the objectives to be achieved is nothing short of essential to proceed with any planning. As with any well thought out project, even within a marketing plan, the objectives must be SMART , that is

specific, measurable, reachable, realistic and accurately predictable. The objectives to be considered are both general ones, for example economic, financial or budget, and those strictly related to the marketing sphere, such as the intention to reach a certain market segment, the desire to increase by a certain percentage the sales volumes or similar purposes.

Marketing strategy

In the part of the marketing plan dedicated to the strategy it is necessary to describe all the weapons that the company plans to use to achieve the objectives specified above. In a marketing strategy it is essential to indicate the target audience you want to target, specifying it in every detail and creating complete and descriptive buyer personas that embody with extreme precision the demographic and social characters of ideal users, their preferences, their interests, profession, habits and any other element useful to create a profile with well-defined contours.

The positioning that we want to achieve on the market and the marketing mix we intend to deploy must also be explained here: positioning, product, price, distribution and promotion policies must be examined in this section down to the last detail.

Planning of marketing activities

Finally, after outlining the strategy, you can finally move on to the drafting of the activities that will actually be carried out, clarifying exactly what the strategic steps to follow are , the timing with which to carry them out and who within the team, or of the teams involved in the plan will take care of them. Important in this phase is also to draw up the costs that each of the activities will entail and get to have an articulated and well-detailed budgeting. Revenue forecasts, estimated break even point, and any other type of data processing and economic analysis must be taken into consideration and pitted with knowledge

Monitoring and estimation of results

Last point, but not least in terms of importance, is the choice of which metrics to use to measure ongoing results and understand whether the marketing plan is working or not.

It is essential to draw up KPIs , key performance metrics, to be analyzed for monitoring, and to create a calendar that immediately establishes verification time windows to ensure that the plan is proceeding for the best and that it is effective and performing.

Following the points defined so far, it will be possible to draw up an efficient marketing plan that allows both small companies and individual professionals and large companies to create a perfect marketing plan to bring