Marketing Planning

The marketing plan executive summary allows you to introduce your company and explain the major points of your marketing plan. The executive summary section of a marketing plan is written for people who may not have the time or interest to read your entire marketing plan.

Every marketing plan should outline the marketing strategies that the company will pursue. Remember, marketing strategies are very different from marketing tactics and marketing programs!

The marketing plan is the blueprint by which the entire marketing effort of a business for a year is run. Getting this plan right means that you have to be clear on what will be done and how it will be done. What are these factors that must be considered in creating a marketing plan?

Target markets should be explicitly defined by the marketing plan. Failure to define your target markets well will typically result in inefficient marketing that does not advance your business objectives.

Every marketing plan needs a competitor analysis. If you're wondering what to address in your competitor analysis, this article is perfect for you.

In the Current Situation section of your marketing plan, you'll provide information about your location, target market and competitive environment. You should also briefly describe the key issues your company faces.

The marketing plan should contain a discussion of your company's 4 Ps of marketing: product, price, promotion, and place.

Marketing objectives define what marketing intends to accomplish on behalf of your organization. Once you define your marketing objectives, everything else can be defined, including marketing strategies, programs, tactics, budgets and responsibilities.

The campaign concept is the best platform on which a business can launch an effective promotional program. A promotional campaign comprises several sub-campaigns including advertising, personal selling, publicity and more. It is these separate aspects that must be strategically planned for to ensure success.

While a website is generally seen as the main component of internet marketing, there are other components that can be used effectively. A combination of various techniques makes for the best results. Here we look at 7 of the key factors.

Do you need to know how to create demand? As a business owner, you need to know! And you need to know how to make customers need you. Here's how it's done.

Want to know how to write a marketing plan? This article spells out the necessary steps to write a marketing plan that works.

A good marketing plan includes an extensive discussion on the competition. The benefits of competitive analysis are many, and business owners who neglect to analyze the competition may be putting their company at risk of failure.

As part of writing the competitive analysis section of a marketing plan, you'll need to gather information on what the competition is up to. This article explains how to gather business competitor information.

In addition to analyzing the competition, your marketing plan should discuss other issues that could impact your business performance.

Measuring the success of a marketing plan is a task that many business owners overlook, dooming their organization to repeat previous marketing mistakes. Here's how to evaluate whether your marketing plan got the job done.

It is common and basic knowledge that each business needs to have its own strategy for gathering market information so as to stay abreast with or be ahead of the competition. This calls for the adoption of an effective marketing information system, quite akin to the intelligence machinery of the diplomatic and military corps, but non-clandestine and very socially acceptable.

Identifying target market segments is part art, part science. Having an understanding of these five ways to segment markets will make the job a little easier.

The ultimate result of a good marketing plan is a set of marketing programs that are designed to achieve your marketing objectives.

How much to spend on marketing? Defining a marketing budget is one of the toughest exercises a business owner must undertake. Here are a few good tips on marketing budgets.