Five Steps to Creating a Marketing Plan

While your business plan typically outlines your entire business, a standalone marketing plan focuses specifically and in more detail on a single function. When business owners want to dig deeper into their marketing strategy, they’re likely to come up with a detailed plan outlining their marketing goals, and the steps needed to achieve them.

The standard components of an effective marketing plan can vary depending on who you ask. Here is my recommended five-step process for developing a marketing plan that will help you achieve your business growth goals.

Step One: Look within.
Think of your business as if it were a person with a unique personality and identity. With that in mind, create separate lists that identify your business strengths, weaknesses, and goals. Write everything down and create big lists. Do not modify or reject anything.

Next, find the priorities among the bullet points. If you’ve done this right, you’ll have more than you can use, and some more important than others. Remove some of the less important bullets from the list and move the important ones up.

This sometimes also requires input from your managers. For example, your management team thinks being conservative about spending is a weakness, but it’s not. That might be something to take off the list.
Related: Guy Kawasaki on Writing an Effective Mission Statement

Step two: Look outward.
The next list you will need to make outlines your business opportunities and threats. Think of both as external to your business, that is, factors that you cannot control, but can try to predict. Opportunities can include new markets, new products, and trends that benefit your business. Threats include competition and technological advances that put you at a disadvantage.

Also make a list of invented people or organizations that serve as ideal buyers or your ideal target market. You can think of each as a character, like a grandmother who discovers e-mail or a student who gets his first credit card. These people are iconic and ideal, and represent the best possible buyer.

Put yourself in the shoes of each of these ideal buyers, then think about the medium they use and the message that would most effectively communicate your offer. Keep your identity in mind when developing your target markets.

Step three: Focus on strategy.
Now is the time to collect your lists. Look for the intersection of your unique identity and your target market. In terms of business offerings, what could you take off the list because it’s not strategic? Then think about dropping those that are not in your target market.

For example, a restaurant business focused on healthy, organic, and fine dining would likely cater to people more in tune with green trends and with above-average disposable income. So, this might exclude people who prefer to eat fast foods like burgers and pizza, and are looking for bargains.

The outcome of step three is strategy: focus on what best fits your identity and is most appealing to your target market. In other words, focus on the area shared by the three lines in the diagram here.
Related: Creating a Unique Selling Proposition

Step Four: Define Measurable Milestones.
Tackle the concrete and measurable details. Your marketing strategy should become a plan that includes monthly review, tracking and measurement, sales forecasts, expense budgets, and non-monetary metrics to track progress. These can include leads, pitches, phone calls, links, blog posts, page views, conversion rates, proposals, and trips, among others.

Match important tasks to your team members and hold them accountable for their successes and failures.

Step Five: Revise often and revise.
Just like your business plan, your marketing plan should continue to evolve with your business. Your assumptions will change, so adapt to the changing business landscape. Some parts of the plan will also work better than others, so revise and revise to reflect what you learn as you go.
Related: Five Signs You Need a Marketing Makeover