Developing and implementing a marketing plan

So you’ve got the idea and you’ve got great products but unless your target market is aware of (and receptive to) what you have to offer, your company will struggle to fulfill its sales potential.

Marketing is the process by which your business communicates with its target market. It’s about publicising products, generating demand and making sales.

However, smart marketers are also in the business of identifying what customer groups want and positioning their businesses to meet those requirements, both now and in the future.

As such, marketing covers a broad range of activity, including customer research (finding out what customers want) through to advertising and direct sales campaigns.

In brief

• Developing a strategy
• Segmenting the market
• Assessing strengths and weaknesses
• Widening your reach
• Implementing a campaign
• The internet
• Evaluation
• What to do next

Although every company is different, the underlying principles of marketing remain pretty much constant. To succeed, you need to understand your own products, your business and your customer base.

At the start-up stage, the first step is to take a long hard look at your product and/or services. Decide on your ”Unique Selling Points” (the so-called ”USPs”) that will differentiate you from your competitors.

Few businesses sell products that are entirely unique, so the USP may not be the product itself but the service or price package that comes with it.

For instance, there’s nothing unique about a cappuccino, so if you run a café, your USPs are likely to be a combination of quality, speed of service, ambiance, price, location, and the friendliness of staff.

Once you’ve identified your USPs, you need to think about customers. The key is to identify customer groups that will be the most receptive to your product. For instance, let’s say you’re planning to sell premium-priced computer equipment with an ongoing service deal as part of the package. As you’re not at the cheaper end of the market, it makes sense to focus on those customer groups who are prepared to pay for quality components and peace of mind.

Of course, you don’t necessarily have to focus on one customer group.

Once you’ve identified a broad market, you can break it down into segments and analyse what customers want within each group. It will be far more valuable if your product is targeting the correct market.

For example, men aged between 18-30 who like football could be best reached through advertisements in the Sun and the Daily Mirror, whereas professional, educated women aged 21-35 who are interested in fashion and design could be reached through advertisements in magazines such as Grazia and Red.

If appropriate, you can then tailor your products and services, and ultimately your marketing communications, to a defined segment. These segments could be based on geography (where you sell), demographics (social status), or previous buying habits.

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis is a useful way of clarifying the goals of your business, its position within the market and its potential appeal to customers.

The concept is simple. Get together with your staff and consider the strengths and weaknesses of your company. For instance:

• Strengths: Competitive pricing; good-build quality; a reactive customer service team; a good reputation.
• Weaknesses: limited reputation outside your local area; a very basic web site; an aging product range.
  Once you’ve done that consider opportunities and threats. For example:
• Opportunities: This product has proven to be a good seller online and an overseas company is prepared to act as an agent for that market.
• Threats: A recent merger has created a powerful competitor; market nearing saturation locally.

Putting all this together as part of a formal process will help you formulate a marketing strategy that is appropriate for your company. But you must be honest. By identifying weaknesses and threats, the exercise will help you to raise your company’s game.

This process of reviewing your products and USPs doesn’t end at the start-up stage. It is an opportunity to increase potential sales and therefore increase your profit margins. You need to be as creative as possible when reviewing products and remember that this is a valuable business development tool.

Every time you launch or update a new product or service, you should be reviewing the market. Equally, you should be reassessing sales opportunities.

Consider the following strategies:

• Same products: same customers
• Same products: new customers
• New products: same customers
• New products: new customers

Are there groups that you could be selling to and new channels through which you could reach them? If so, how can you make them aware of your products?

Once you have a clear idea of the market you want to reach, the next stage is to implement a campaign based on clear objectives. For instance, if you want to raise your sales by 20% in the London region you will want to raise awareness of your product.

Holistic marketing extends way beyond advertising. Often the starting point is a sales drive. This could mean staff spending more time on the phone arranging appointments with new or existing customers. Meanwhile, an increased presence at sales fairs will certainly raise your company’s profile, as will features about your business in local newspapers, trade publications and even the national press. Play on your USPs to get column inches. Consider hiring a PR company to get you into the press.

If you have the budget, advertising can be a hugely effective means of raising interest.

Your options include:

• Leaflet drops A highly effective method of informing local customers about your business
• Mailshots A more expensive option, but if you are aiming at a national or regional audience, you can target mailshots via the post according to demographic and social status data
• Email It is illegal to send unsolicited emails to consumers. However, you can buy lists of people who have ”opted-in”. Generally, however, this is not as effective as emailing existing customers to maintain a relationship
• Local Radio Effective for local campaigns
• TV Advertising Expensive, but with the potential to establish your brand more effectively than any other medium
• Press You can reach a general audience through ads in newspapers and magazines, or you can reach a targeted market through trade and specialist publications
• Brochures A tried-and-trusted means of driving mail-order business.

The internet is a hugely important marketing tool. All businesses can benefit from having a website with their own unique address, such as ”www.yourcompany.co.uk” – and a presence on internet directories such as Yell. Your site should contain enough relevant product information to enable customers to find you through search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

Paid Searches are another successful marketing tool. Google Ads, for example, can be both effective and inexpensive, as you only pay if someone clicks on your advertising link.

It is worth considering partnerships with other sites. For instance, if you sell green houses, a mutual link with a non-competitive plant nursery, would drive traffic to both sites. It may be worth joining an affiliate network that will place links to your site on complementary web pages. You pay the third party a commission on any sales generated. It is also an option to contact the plant nursery yourself and they may advertise your products for free, this would be an ideal win-win situation, so there’s nothing to be lost in asking the question.

Marketing requires a budget, therefore you should ensure that you’re getting value for money. If you’re sending out mailshots or leaflets it’s possible to set up a special phone number through which to channel replies. This will enable you to assess the effectiveness of your marketing plan. If you advertise online or expect to draw traffic to your site from search engines, web analytics tools will enable you to see where the customers are coming from. You can then tweak your online marketing strategy accordingly. Google provides a free analytics tool.

Specialist advertising and marketing agencies should provide you with reports based on your objectives. Use this information to ascertain whether a particular campaign has achieved its objectives, and as a guide to marketing spend in the years ahead.