Marketing plan
If you want to get to a specific place, you need a map. And in the case of companies, that map is the marketing plan .
Having a well-developed marketing plan is a must for companies of all industries and all sizes. And yet, there are still many who are launched to advertise online without having a clear marketing strategy or with a little specific plan. So that this is not your case, in this article we are going to review everything you need to know to create the digital marketing plan of your company. Take a look at Product review blog.
How to make the best marketing plan for your company
A marketing plan is a document (in text or presentation format) where the analysis of the company’s situation, the objectives it seeks to achieve and the steps to follow to achieve them is collected.
There are many reasons to develop a detailed plan: it helps achieve company goals, reinforces management and employee commitment, helps define a long-term vision, improves efficiencies, and can even help prevent (and fix) errors. quickly when they occur).
When it comes to developing the marketing plan , organization is key. There are a series of aspects that every plan must include, and a logical order in which to work on them so that the final result is coherent and operational.
Next, I am going to detail what are the 5 basic sections of an online marketing plan and what each of them should include. If you want to make it even easier for yourself, I encourage you to download the checklist: List of requirements for your digital marketing campaigns . In it we have included the 20 basic points that we recommend covering before undertaking any digital marketing action.
1 # Analysis of the current situation
Paraphrasing Total Sinister, to know where we are going, we must first see who we are and where we come from. That is, the first mandatory step in any marketing plan is the analysis of the current situation of the company.
In this situation we see the influence of both external and internal factors. Among the external ones we have the general situation (social, economic …), the particularities of the sector and the market. Interns refer to the company itself, for example, the staff and resources we have.
To systematize this analysis and ensure that nothing is overlooked, we can resort to the classic SWOT analysis : weaknesses, threats, strengths and opportunities.
The weaknesses are those internal aspects of the company in which deficiencies manifest themselves, it is at a disadvantage against competitors or simply want to improve. To find them, we will ask ourselves questions such as “in what ways is the competition superior?”, “What things cause us to lose sales?” or “what are we least satisfied with?” Some examples of weaknesses could be lack of funding or limited product offerings.
The threats are also a negative, but in this case come from the outside. They are those factors that endanger the company or at least reduce its market share. Identifying them in time in the plan can help us to neutralize them. To find them, we can ask ourselves about new market trends or changes in our sector. For example, the entry of new competitors in the market could constitute a threat.
The strengths are the positive internal aspects of the company, those in which stands against the competition or we are most proud. The strengths are the key to competitive advantage. We can identify them by asking ourselves about our advantages over the competition, the resources we have, or our strengths in general. Examples: having a team with the best professionals in the sector or being considered the best in product X.
Finally, the opportunities are the external factors that play in our favor and that can be taken advantage of by the company. As with threats, we can find them by wondering about new trends and changes in the market. For example, there may be a legislative change that favors us or a favorable trend in the market.
In addition to the SWOT, I strongly recommend also carrying out a good analysis of the buyer person , that is, of the ideal client of our company. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation that puts “face and eyes” on the market we are targeting. At a minimum, it should include the following sections:
Who is our buyer persona? Here we collect information about the general profile of our ideal client, their demographic information and personal identifiers.
How can our company help you? We will detail this person’s primary and secondary goals and challenges and explain how we can help you address them.
Why? Feedback on clients’ challenges and objectives and their most common complaints and objections. Here you can be inspired by the actual feedback you receive during the research process.
How? Definition of the marketing and sales messages that you are going to use to reach this potential customer.
2 # Competitor analysis
This is one more aspect of the analysis of external factors, but it deserves its own section in the marketing plan because of how decisive it can be for the future of our company.
After selecting the main competing companies (if you don’t know what they are, it’s already taking time to find out) we should try to answer at least these four questions about them:
What budget and volume of business do they handle? Large companies publish their annual or quarterly results, so in those cases it is usually quite accessible information. For more modest companies, you can try requesting reports in databases such as einforma or asexor. And if not, you can always extrapolate based on data such as the number of employees on staff (LinkedIn is very useful in these cases) or the breadth of the catalog.
What is the price of your products or services? In the case of B2C companies, this information is easily accessible, while in B2B you will have to search a little more. Once you have the information, create a price range and think about where you want to position yourself.
How is the sales process? From first contact to conversion to services per sale, your competitor’s customer journey can give you many useful clues for your business. The most common way to find out is through the figure of the “mystery customer”, you can even be it yourself!
How do you get customers? That is, what are your marketing and promotion strategies. In the case of online marketing, you have it quite easy to find out by researching their website, social networks and other channels. I also recommend that you take a look at tools like SEMRush and Google Alerts.
