The Essentials Of A Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is usually part of your overall business plan, though it can be produced as a stand-alone document.

Effective marketing is crucial to the success of every business venture. Your marketing plan is the road map you will follow to achieve your goals. It lists your objectives and the actions you will take to achieve them.

Your marketing plan should not be a ‘static’ document – rather one you refer to and review on a regular basis.

In order for your marketing plan to be workable, it’s vital that everyone on your team knows what is required of them and when.

You should:

1. Set realistic, clear and measurable targets.

2. Set deadlines for achieving each target.

3. Determine a budget for each marketing activity.

4. Decide who in your team is responsible for each activity.

5. Brief your team/ colleagues on the details of your plan.

6. Set reporting guidelines, so that each member of your team can provide feedback at regular intervals.

It is generally helpful to include a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis in your marketing plan. Most likely you will already have completed one for your business plan, in which case you won’t need to start from scratch. A simple review/ update will normally suffice. A PEST analysis is also helpful for identifying and acting on opportunities and threats within your industry. PEST stands for:

Political and legal changes such as new regulations.

Economic factors such as interest rates, exchange rates and consumer confidence.

Social factors such as changing attitudes and lifestyles, and the ageing population.

Technological factors such as new materials and growing use of the internet.

Every marketing plan begins with an Executive Summary – an overview of the plan – though in practice it’s better to write this last to ensure you don’t leave anything vital out.

Your Business Strategy is also a vital part of your plan. It outlines:

Your Mission Statement.

What your business does/ is about.

Key business objectives.

Strategy for achieving objectives (overview).


Use the SMART acronym for each of your key business objectives and you won’t go far wrong:

Specific: We need to attract 10 new clients this quarter.

Measurable: How will you know when you have achieved your objective?

Achievable: Do you have the right resources in place to reasonably enable you to attain the objective? This usually comes down to people and money.

Realistic: Having a target which is considered unreasonable will only demotivate you and your staff. Great targets will stretch you and your resources and serve as a means of motivation.

Time-constrained: There must be a deadline for achieving each objective and this should be clearly stated in your plan.

Every Business is Potentially a Magnificent Rose Waiting to Bloom

It’s pretty easy to forget that even the largest companies and organisations operating around the world today, started life as tiny enterprises, the result of the enthusiasm and dedication of a few. At the time they would have had little if any inclination of what the future held.


Take the famous Golden Arches of multinational fast food chain McDonald’s, for instance. The company was founded in 1955 when local entrepreneur Ray Kroc purchased the rights to a small hamburger chain. Nearly 60 years on and spurred on in no small part by the clever concept of franchising, McDonald’s now boasts 33,000 restaurants worldwide and a global staff compliment of an incredible 1.7 million. It is estimated that these numbers help McDonald’s serve some 64 million people every day.

Then there’s computer software and hardware company Microsoft. Paul Allen and Bill Gates officially founded Microsoft in 1975, in the intervening years the firm has grown into one of the pre-eminent lights in IT, becoming a global monster worth some $224 billion (£144 billion). Now, Microsoft’s popular operating system, windows, boasts around 88 per cent of the market place and Bill Gates is one of the richest men on the planet. Mightily impressive stuff indeed.

Now, we’re not saying that working a certain way is a guaranteed route to success for a small company to reach Microsoft-style heights but, it’s worth remembering the humble beginnings of even the biggest names and what patience and hard work can potentially achieve.

Solid, small business marketing, backed-up with comprehensive market research of competitors and consumers, which in turn leads to a clear strategy, really is priceless.

It’s definitely a good idea to personally enquire face-to-face or over the phone, or search online, for an agency you feel not only offers the best service for the best price, but one that you can work with as well. The perfect vision for your company will be implemented before you know it.

Kick Start Your Business With a Comprehensive Marketing Strategy

A business should always keep a close eye on the very industry it is part of. Becoming complacent or distracted can be commercial suicide.


Take the British motorcycle industry for example. It was considered a world leader during the early decades of the 20th century, with research and development spurred on by the demands of two world wars, producing ever-more powerful and convenient bikes. Indeed, records show that 1959 was a record year for bike sales and exports. Yet it was not long after this that the dismissive nature towards the global competition blinded the British motorcycle industry from the change in attitude and trends.

The early ‘60s saw the dominance of names such as Triumph, BSA and Norton at first threatened and then ultimately smashed, by foreign competitors, particularly by the emerging Japanese manufactures. Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha rode into town with their efficient, cost-effective designs and cheaper retail prices. They were soon doing British-style bikes far better than the British themselves.

British rivals, who were now steadfastly stuck in the past with their thinking, where blown away as the pristine, electric-start Japanese bikes rode off the production line, boasting impeccable reliability, ground-breaking electrics and came pre-fitted with indicator lights as standard. The British had failed to see the changing market and, although they tried to play catch-up, it was way too late.

It’s a stark reminder of what can happen to a business if it doesn’t keep it’s a ear to the ground and continually listen to what its customers want, as well as what its competitors are doing within the marketplace.

To give your company a head start, sound, professional business marketing will allow your company the opportunity to be fully-equipped to fight competitively against your rivals as well as attracting those customers that you are really after.

Get Social-able With Your Online Marketing

So after all the hype, the concept of ‘web 2.0’ and the promise of a more ‘social’ focus on the internet now has its feet firmly under the table. Social media, driven by the relentless expansion of heavyweights Facebook and Twitter has exploded.

So much so, they, along with platforms such as Youtube, Wikkipedia, Flickr and many others can become the foundational basis of a company’s online drive. It’s no longer just about a good service and functioning website. As a firm, the world expects you to interact with them and, perish the thought, even be interesting.

Just look at the some of the statistics of the growth of social media over the past 4 years. It makes quite astonishing reading.

Facebook for instance, plodded along for a year or so before in early 2007 the uptake of new users positively burst into life turning it into a global phenomenon. Nowadays the social networking giant boasts some 750 million (as of July 2011) active users worldwide. Of which, an impressive percentage log-on to get their fix at least once a day.

While Twitter, can boast nearly 100 million tweets per day from its dedicated bank of registered users of some 180 million. Now they’re impressive numbers, and self evidence why social media, and Twitter in particular are invaluable ways to interact with your market/audience and release company information, such as new products, promotions or services.

The next 12 months show every sign of being even bigger in terms of growth. Facebook has recently rolled out the latest iteration of its layout and news feed, while the industry gets excited about the imminent arrival of ‘facebook timeline’ (a direct response to Google’s fledgling Google+ social network service) which promises an all-new way to showcase your personality in cyber space.

One thing’s for sure, your company needs to be part of this revolution. If you don’t have the marketing set-up to develop a sufficient online model in-house, then a search marketing consultant is what you will need to take full advantage. Before you know it, your business will have the Facebookers and Twitterati that matter unable to stop trending about your company.

Lights, Camera, Action...How Movies Are the Perfect Inspiration for Business Success

For a good example of how the constituent parts of a marketing campaign come together to support the greater good of a much larger entity, you need look no further than that of the movie industry.

The script and story of the movie can be compared to that of a company’s initial ethos, charter and objective, while a film’s teaser trailers, billboard posters and website are similar to those first tentative steps when a company is promoting itself properly for the first time.

A movie, just like a company, is geared towards making as much money as possible and that means exploiting every last revenue stream to its limit – whether it’s box office, merchandising or external funding. That means that films, costing in-excess of 100s of millions of pounds are backed by the studios who have produced them, with equally ambitious promotions, campaigns and events.

That’s the way you have to look at your business.

Marketing companies will give you the necessary resources and expertise so that your ‘brand’ is as strong as it can be in the online stratosphere and really break those box office records, creating a blockbuster of a company.

A good online communications company will be able to put together a marketing strategy tailored specifically for the needs of your business. They’ll research obvious and not so obvious competitors and support you in gaining an edge over them.

Online is key. But it’s not just about having a great-looking and easy to use website. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter and dedicated company ‘channels’ on Youtube are the building blocks of communicating to your business to business customers, consumers and staff. A web marketing agency will have the skills to enable your company to fully embrace this.

For an ideal fit when it comes to your company’s online marketing, have a look online for that Oscar-winning combination.

A Bespoke Marketing Drive Can Lead Your Company to the Top of the League

1992 saw the much-vaunted debut of the Premier League, trumpeted as the new age of English football. It heralded a drastic change for the national game as money flooded into the sport altering it indelibly. With clubs spurred on by the television deals and the desire to attract a worldwide audience, they become more than a football club, they were now companies – global brands competing for market share.

As the seasons progressed, football clubs expanded their communications departments or hired expertise in the form of a third-party marketing consultant to handle a variety of avenues. Activities such as a redesign – or an ‘evolving’ as it was referred to – of the club crest to a subtly different, minimal, more marketable design, spear-headed this shift in momentum.

While at the same time, marketing was working its magic in generally harnessing the money-making potential of a football club taking advantage of the potential.

Looking for opportunities and consolidating your business is very much like a football team. From small businesses with a handful of staff, to multinational firms, a focused, and intelligent marketing drive will reap so many benefits and keep you in the hunt for glory.

For instance, hiring a specialised marketing firm to provide you with the ideal PR and communications weapons will make a huge impact if it’s done correctly, keeping you ahead of the game.

Putting together an intuitive and informative website, to advertise your skills is a sure-fire way to develop a following – as is gaining a foothold within the rankings of search engines such as Google. You can ensure you’re spreading the word online further still, by using social networking, blogging, link building and targeted, email marketing, showcasing the very services and products you provide. Highlight to people why you are the best at what you do.

A quick search online will show you exactly what’s out there to help your company really find its voice so it can go on to score some career-changing goals in the process.

A Business Consultant Can Help Your Firm Reach For The Stars

American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.”

Of course, it’s open to interpretation, but what we’d like to think he was talking about is that if you keep an open mind and have belief in yourself, there are always opportunities to be a success and reach your goals – no matter the challenge.

And, when you think about it – that sums up perfectly the ideal mantra business mantra, whether it is an upcoming family-run operation, or a long established multinational.

To give your business a fighting chance to meet its goals then hiring a business consultant is an excellent method to get everything from marketing and corporate branding, overall strategy and recruitment within your company working in harmony.

A good consultancy understands that every business, small, medium or large, is different, and because of that, often need a specific set of requirements. Taking the time to understand your business and analyse the industry in which you sit, there is one sole aim – to increase your profits.

Everything from internal structure, staff and customer communication, the product or service and marketing activities are all looked at. If something isn’t working and improvements are required – the logistical and cost implication of such improvements are examined before being put to your company for approval.

In terms of having access to a business consultancy or not, it can be the difference between having a clear goal and pathway to continued growth or just treading water and not really making the kind of impact you want in your field.

Online, there are a raft of companies out there that can help. With the right sort of advice, support and consultation your business will soon be operating in a way that Ralph Waldo Emerson would appreciate –like poetry in motion.