“A goal without a plan is just a wish”, and a business cannot rely on wishes. Planning is heart and soul of any business as it plots your organization’s course of action leading to the achievement of set goals. A marketing plan portrays your target audience, their interests, and the ways of reaching them out. Below are some of the significant steps to be kept in mind before choosing or forming a marketing plan.
- Market Research
Market Research plays the most dominant role in planning as an action without knowledge is not an action, but merely some futile efforts. It involves collecting information that provides insight into the customer’s preferences, shopping patterns and location. It also helps you in keeping an eye on your competitors and ongoing market trends.
- Profiling of Target Markets
One needs to do segmentation of the market as promoting your products or services to everyone can cost you a bomb along with being ineffective. Segmentation can be based on various characteristics like location, demographics (like age, gender, income level, occupation, etc.), behavior (like loyalty, readiness to use, etc.) and lifestyle (social class, personality, etc).
- Identifying your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
A USP is a reason which attracts your customers and persuades them to buy from you rather than your customers. For example, none of the noodles brands was able to capture the market share of Maggi as its USP lies in its task maker or masala. One can develop their USB by identifying their competence area and benefits to customers.
- Selection of Marketing Avenues
It is essential to decide in advance which promoting, territories you will concentrate on, along with the most suitable marketing avenue. Some of the effective and commonly used marketing platforms are social media, business websites, blogging, print media, cold calling and mails.
- Deciding on Goals and Budget
A plan is always underpinned by the desired goals and objectives which take the business towards success. Business goals should be defined in a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-based) way.
Finance is one of the most critical parts of any plan as it is hard to monitor all the expenses. As opposed to paging through many spreadsheets, make spending plans part of your showcasing plan. As work advances, you will have the option to follow genuine outcomes against projections. Along these lines, you can gauge the rate of profitability and settle on educated choices.
- Strengthening of Customer Base
Customers are key to success for any business thus, its important to satisfy them and encourage loyalty. There is no marketing plan better than word of mouth marketing, which can be done only by nurturing your loyal customers. Providing exceptional services, taking criticism positively and constantly evolving can help in strengthening your customer base.
- Monitor and Review
It is important to monitor and review your marketing activities to ensure that everything is going in the right direction. Reviewing can also enable us to take corrective measures as even the best plans need to be adjusted, relying upon the exhibition of your projects and crusades.
LAVA Brands is one such Dubai based company that caters with the planning and execution of marketing strategies.