Starting Your Business in Nevada: Developing Your Marketing Plan
NCET helps you explore business and technology.
Everyone knows you need a marketing plan, and it can seem like a daunting process, but if you’re running a small business, it doesn’t have to be that complicated. It simply comes down to setting goals and writing a to-do list that will help you achieve them.
Section 1: Objectives
What are your business goals for the calendar year? Be specific but succinct. It could be “to sell 1,000 widgets in London” or “to get 1,000 new customers to visit my restaurant at least once”. You can see these are clear and specific goals – it’s important that they are more specific than “make more money” because the more specific they are the easier it will be to go back and figure out exactly what you must do to achieve them.
Section 2: Your products and/or services
What products and services do you offer? This should be a fairly simple inventory. I know this sounds obvious, however, it’s important to have this list handy when taking next steps.
Section 3: Your target audience
Who needs your products/services? You need to answer this question from a need perspective, not just who you want to sell to, because need is what drives sales. The need is usually motivated by a specific problem. An example of this might be “single professionals between the ages of 30 and 50 who own pets and go on vacation at least once a year.” Why do they need it? Again, be specific and succinct. For the example above, we could go on: “providing a safe and attractive pet boarding facility for stays longer than a week for pets who may experience separation anxiety”.
Section 4: Your competitors
Who are your relevant competitors? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How can you compete with their strengths and take advantage of their weaknesses? I go into detail on how to easily determine this information in the article I wrote for the NCET series last year on how to conduct competitive analysis here.
Section 5: Your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
Considering your target audience, their problem, and your competition, what makes your product/service unique as a solution to a problem for your customers? Expressing how your product or service solves a problem for your target audience in a unique way is now the USP that will guide your strategic and tactical decisions in the future.
Section 6: Your Pricing
How will you rate your product? When you looked at your competition, was the full spectrum of premium, midrange, and budget prices covered, or was any of those missing? There may be an advantage if you are the only low-cost option in a specific market, or the only premium option in a market where many competitors are competing in a “race to the bottom” that reduces quality.
Section 7: Sales and Support
How will you sell the products/services? What is your geographic market — is it a city, a region? Or is it sold online to anyone, anywhere? Does it require continuous service? How will you build ongoing service into an initial sale?
Section 8: Marketing Tactics
How do people hear about your products/services? This should be determined by identifying the behaviors of your target audience. What are they watching/reading? Where do they move throughout the day? What are their habits and preferences? Younger audiences don’t watch much live TV during the day, so advertising on local TV would be less effective than running targeted ads on social media, for example.
Section 9: Budget
How much money do you have to effectively promote the product? Once you have defined your tactics above, first divide your available funds into the most effective tactics.
Article 10: Action plan
In what order will you execute your tactics? How will you handle incoming leads? How will you determine which tactics work? What will you do to follow up on leads that may have entered your sales funnel but didn’t fully convert to sales? What will you do once the tactics are executed to turn sales into repeat customers? Retaining a customer is much cheaper than winning a new one in your next marketing cycle.
Join us next month to discuss designing and building a website and securing appropriate social media accounts.
Wesley McQuillen is a Principal at ALTER Strategies (www.alterstrategies.co) and creates marketing strategies that help age-restricted and highly regulated businesses increase sales and stand out in a crowded field while navigating complex regulations.
NCET (www.NCET.org) is a member-supported nonprofit organization that helps people explore business and technology.
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