Winning the Game: Your Strategic Marketing Plan

If you want your small business to compete with the "big boys" you should have a "strategic marketing plan." A strategic marketing plan basically spells out how you will use your available resources to meet your companys stated goals and objectives. (You do have goals right? If not, thats a topic for another article.) Heres what you need:

1) State Your Objectives
Companies usually set objectives in terms of desired profit, total sales, or market share. Profit tends to be the most popular company focus. Market share refers to how much of the market you snag compared to your competitors. Other objectives can be your total sales, number of loyal customers, or customer satisfaction. Company objectives always provide a time frame and are verifiable, which is why objectives are usually stated in percentages and dollar signs.

2) Situation Analysis
Looks at the current business environment and can be elaborate or very simple. The components examined are competition, the size of the market, types of customers, channels of distribution, and economic conditions. By taking an overview of the whole picture and stating your strengths and weaknesses, youll have a clearer understanding of how well your company will compete.

3) Target Market
Who are your customers? Your company cant sell to everyone, so you need to decide what part of the market segment youre going to serve. A thorough understanding of who your customers are and how to find them are imperative to your companys success. Look at demographics such as how much money they make, where they live, how much education they have, etc.

4) Positioning
This is the picture created in your customers eyes about your companys products/services. When you think of positioning, think of "image." Positioning is very important in todays competitive world. Corporate marketing teams will often use positioning strategies when trying to target different target markets.

5) Marketing Mix
The final step is to develop plans for each aspect of the marketing mix and integrate them into your companys overall strategy. So, whats in the marketing mix you ask? They consist of the "Four Ps":

Product
Place
Promotion
Price
You must use all four elements of the mix in your strategy and devise a plan for each. When youre developing plans for each element, ask yourself the following types of questions.

A) Product What new products can we introduce? What type of service do our customers expect? What should our return policy be?
B) Place What types of places should carry our products? How will we get our products to our customers? How will we handle complaints?
C) Promotion What am I trying to accomplish through my promotion objectives? Branding? More sales? Something else? What types of media should we use to advertise, radio, TV, print, etc?
D) Price How will my product/service be priced in comparison to my competitors? Can I make a profit at this price level?
By keeping all of the above in mind youll design a strategic marketing plan that allows you to win the game and compete with your competitors.

Running a business, just like a game, relies on good strategy........Its your move....

This article is brought to you by courtesy and reprint permission of http://www.promotenewz as published by http://www.ientry.com

About the Author

Merle (just Merle, thank you) is an experienced Internet Marketer/Promoter. She knows what it takes for business websites to be successful. She has been online for over four years and has two other websites to her credit: MC Promotions - http://www.mcpromotions.com/ and Merles World - http://www.merlesworld.com/


merle@mcpromotions.com
http://www.marketingchallenge.com/