ESSENTIALS OF A PROFESSIONAL MARKETING PLAN

Every marketing plan has to fit the needs and situation. Even so, there are standard components you just can't do without. A marketing plan should always have a situation analysis, marketing strategy, sales forecast, and expense budget. Situation Analysis Normally this will include a market analysis, a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), and a competitive analysis. The market analysis will include market forecast, segmentation, customer information, and market needs analysis.  Marketing Strategy This should include at least a mission statement, objectives, and focused strategy including market segment focus and product positioning. Sales Forecast This would include enough detail to track sales month by month and follow up on plan-vs.-actual analysis. Normally a plan will also include specific sales by product, by region or market segment, by channels, by manager responsibilities, and other elements. The forecast alone is a bare minimum. Expense Budget This ought to include enough detail to track expenses month by month and follow up on plan-vs.-actual analysis. Normally a plan will also include specific sales tactics, programs, management responsibilities, promotion, and other elements. The expense budget is a bare minimum. Are They Enough?  These minimum requirements above are not the ideal, just the minimum. In most cases you'll begin a marketing plan with an Executive Summary, and you'll also follow those essentials just described with a review of organizational impact, risks and contingencies, and pending issues. Include a Specific Action Plan You should also remember that planning is about the results, not the plan itself. A marketing plan must be measured by the results it produces. The implementation of your plan is much more important than its brilliant ideas or massive market research. You can influence implementation by building a plan full of specific, measurable and concrete plans that can be tracked and followed up. Plan-vs-actual analysis is critical to the eventual results, and you should build it into your plan. YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE THE LIFELINE OF YOUR BUSINESS.... Understanding and Identifying Your Customers Research your customer base first. Your present customers are probably your most important market. Know as much as you can about who your present customers are, where they find you, what they like about you, and what they don't like. Your present customers can lead you to future customers too. Unless you are a brand new business with no customers at all, your market research should begin with learning as much as possible about your present customers. Start by classifying your customers into useful groups, or segments. Market segmentation can lead you to better marketing. Classifying customers can help you understand their needs, channels, and differences. More is not necessarily better when it comes to customer data. If your company sells three products a year, the crucial data will come from these key customers. After collecting some demographic information, your company will be able to focus on the best way to get feedback from the customer. For example, if your company sells home and garden tools, your best target might presumably be the married, dual income, weekend shopper. As soon you have qualified the customer, move on to the surveys and complaint responses. Look as well at complaints and problems as a valuable source of customer market information. Studies show that 2-4% of dissatisfied customers complain, which leaves 96-98% unaccounted for. Can you identify these other unhappy customers? By contacting them you may learn of a product problem, discover a solution to a problem, and/or repair and save customer relationships. Remember, if they are not talking to you, they may be compaining to your next potentioal customer. User Satisfaction Surveys  Consider using customer survey information to find out more about your customers. The obvious information includes general characteristics that help divide the customers into segments. Do your customers divide into groups: By age, income, or gender? By profession, educational level? By type of company or industry? By how much disposable income they have? This information can be extremely useful. However, you may need to filter information from questions that might encourage customers to give incorrect answers, such as questions about age, income level, and intent to buy. (Following material is taken from the book Inc.'s How to Really Deliver Superior Customer Service, published by Inc. Magazine.) After systematically gathering targeted expectation data, consider using the following information to design a quantitative survey. Here are some guidelines for that survey. These were provided by Tom Carnes, of PDQ Printing in Las Vegas, NV: Obtain inside agreement as to the purpose of the survey. Too many have eight purposes, none of which is served very well by a short survey. Firms need to ask all critical stakeholders: How do you think we should use the satisfaction data? Then consensus should be reached before the survey is designed. Keep the survey fairly short. The response rate drops significantly when a survey starts to take more than 10 to 15 minutes to complete. At 10 or 15 minutes, though, you can achieve an average response of 65% to 75%. Send the survey to more than one contact within the account. If this is not done, you run the risk of getting high levels of satisfaction and then having the relationship ended by a dissatisfied and unsurveyed account contact. All responses need to be confidential. The rule of research is that unless confidentiality is guaranteed, you are probably not going to get the whole truth. Use the appropriate scale to generate actionable data: account-prioritized improvement areas. A comparison of performance data with expectations provides comparison of the most robust improvement data. Focus Groups  Consider using focus groups to find out more about your customers, and what they think of your products and services. Most people know the focus-group technique, where customers are brought together and asked their opinion by a professional facilitator. In initial business-to-business satisfaction focus groups, we usually ask key account contacts a number of pointed questions about their expectations and how well the supplier is meeting them. Focus groups take up more time and effort than surveys, but the interactivity of a focus group may provide clearer feedback. Many companies use focus groups to look at new products, or focus on identifying solutions to problems. Software publisher Intuit used focus groups to assemble people who hadn't purchased its software, but were considered potential customers. It asked them why they weren't customers, what problems they had in related areas, how software could help them. This case study was included in Inc.'s 'How to Really Deliver Superior Customer Service'. Phelps County Bank of Rolla, Missouri, whose case is included in the same Inc. book, turned to focus groups to ask senior citizens what they liked and didn't like about the bank. The bank invited 80 seniors from among its customers, and was surprised when 60 people, instead of the 20 it expected, showed up for a discussion. The facilitators broke the group into three separate groups, and ran three focus groups. Among the important discoveries was that seniors wanted special treatment, but didn't like most existing programs in competing banks. Eventually the bank created a seniors group, called "PC-Bees," that became very successful. At PDQ Printing from Las Vegas, NV, focus group discussions with customers are videotaped and used for several related purposes. With the tapes, there is an edited record of customer responses whose uses are limited only by the firm's creativity. Such tapes can be used to: Tighten and align the questions on satisfaction surveys. Bring the "voice of the customer" directly into internal training programs. Help determine which internal delivery systems are out of alignment with customer expectations. Develop quicker employee buy-in for any process or system improvement. Video focus groups are among the most powerful ways to create a sense of urgency about service quality. Employees tend to listen to customers more than they listen to their own supervisors. At the same time, video focus groups are a powerful way to capture targeted customer expectations systematically. There's no better way to leverage a research investment. Set Your Marketing Objectives A good marketing plan sets specific marketing objectives. Think about sales, market share, market positioning, image, awareness, and related objectives. Remember to make all your objectives concrete and measurable. Develop your plan to be implemented, not just read. Objectives that can't be measured, tracked, and followed up, are less likely to lead to implementation. The capability of plan-vs.-actual analysis is essential. Marketing objectives are likely to be based on sales revenues and market share. They may also include related objectives such as presentations, seminars, ad placements, review coverage, or proposals. Sales are easy to track and measure. Market share is harder, because it depends on market research. There are other marketing goals that are less tangible and harder to measure, such as positioning or image and awareness. Remember, as you develop the objectives, it is much better to include the measurement system within the objective itself. This is especially true when those measurements aren't obvious. The Contribution Margin Monthly Table and Sales vs. Expenses Monthly Chart represent two fairly standard means of measuring the success of meeting your marketing objectives. Marketing Plan Pro includes preformatted spreadsheets that allow you to calculate your Contribution Margin and Sales vs. Expenses effortlessly. These two examples are taken from the sample marketing plan AMT, Inc. produced with Marketing Plan Pro. Contribution Margin Table Sales vs. Expenses Chart Sample table and chart from Marketing Plan Pro.

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