An example of an enterprise marketing plan. How to write a marketing plan

SOSTAC is a widely used marketing and business planning tool. It is among the most popular marketing models that have stood the test of time.

In this article, you will learn how to develop marketing plan promotion of the company using the SOSTAC model.

Created back in the 1990s by writer and speaker PR Smith, the SOSTAC® structure has earned a good reputation among authorities. It is taken as a basis by representatives of businesses of various sizes, including start-up entrepreneurs or international organizations around the world.

The SOSTAC marketing plan covers six key areas, namely:

Stage 1. Analysis of the current situation

The first stage of marketing planning is the analysis of the current situation. This is an overview of your project - who you are, what you do and how your online sales work. External and internal factors affecting your business are also considered.

In this section, you will paint a big picture of your project. To do this, ask the following questions:

• Who are your customers today (make a portrait of your target audience and their authors).
• : What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities or threats for the entire organization?
• Conduct competitor analysis. Who are your competitors? How do they create competition (eg price, product, customer service, reputation)? What are your key differences?
• Make a list of all customer acquisition channels you use and the success of each for your organization. What works well and what doesn't?

Below we will take a closer look at an example of target audience analysis.

The target audience

This section should analyze who makes up your target audience. This is important in order to clearly represent existing customers and understand who you are actually targeting. If you are working in competitive environment think about what your special offer() if you have it?

Customer personalization helps you see your existing customers and understand their buying motives. Creation will also help you overcome barriers to new clients. To create a series of avatars, match and analyze existing data from your CRM system and order history, and then build a profile picture of your existing customers based on this.

For online trading, the information you may consider from your CRM system may include:

• Male/female - what is the percentage?
• Age profile - what is the average age and is there room for development of age group categories?
• Location/Address Data - Percentage of customers living in and outside of your area.
• Purchase history. Gain a clearer picture of purchase history, average order, brand preference trends, and products ordered by size, for example.
• Method of payment for the purchase (for example, credit or debit card, upon receipt).
• The route traveled for the purchase. Were there purchases through a search engine, email newsletter, affiliate site, contextual advertising?
• Frequency. How often are purchases made?

Based on these data, we proceed to the second stage. We need to turn this data into more personal information that may be relevant to your organization.

Creating Customer Avatars

For example, we have collected data on the target audience and now consider two avatars for a fictitious online t-shirt store:

Avatar A - Sergey:

Sergey is a professional, he is 28 years old, he rents an apartment in Moscow, a bachelor with high level income. He is very passionate about football. He likes to show his support for the football club by buying a new fan jersey from the online store every year.

It is more convenient for Sergey to place orders online and communicate using social networks, in which he follows the latest news in the world of football and football product launches. As the World Cup provides an opportunity to present a collection of international fan shirts, it allows company X to get in touch with Sergei and offer him an international fan shirt in addition to his favorite club jersey.

The scenario of interaction between avatar A and the online store:

Sergei read the latest World Cup news on his favorite football blog. He noticed that the blog offers an exclusive promotion - you can order any World Cup t-shirt from company X and save 10% by clicking on the link to www.vash-magazin.ru/worldcup. Sergey follows the link and gets to the site of company X, which provides him with a selection of T-shirts available for order with an exclusive 10% discount. He chooses a t-shirt in his size and completes the purchase using his credit card.

Avatar B - Katya:

Katya is a professional, she is 33 years old, she is in a relationship. Katya loves to keep up with the latest trends fashion, and it is convenient for her to place orders in her favorite online store. Her boyfriend is a big football fan, he likes to keep up with football fashion and buy new fan shirts with the image of his favorite team. Katya may face the hype around the World Cup. This will encourage her to shop at Company X for her boyfriend. She will purchase merchandise with images of the team they will support during the tournament.

The scenario of interaction between avatar B and the online store:

Katya received email from one of her preferred online stores. This email includes Company X's marketing promotion, an advertisement offering to order a World Cup T-shirt with a promo code. She decides that it will become great gift for her boyfriend and goes to www.vash-magazin.ru. She's not sure which team jersey to get, so she calls customer service. She explains her situation to a sales consultant and places her order for a fan jersey over the phone.

In this way, you represent your customers in detail and can prepare appropriate advertising campaigns for them. For starters, you can create 2-3 customer avatars for each group of similar products.

Stage 2. Goal setting

The second phase of your marketing plan system should be focused on your goal. Once you have defined your goal, it is important to make it as precise and unambiguous as possible. To do this, the goal must meet the following points:

• Concreteness. What indicator do you plan to work on within the framework of a given goal?
• Measurability. How do you plan to measure performance? Will it be controlled through quantitative or qualitative analysis, for example?
• Reachability. Can you, in principle, achieve such a goal in the foreseeable future?
• Relevant and realistic. In this case, when developing a marketing plan, we mean the possibility of achieving this goal with marketing tools, and not development, for example.
• Time limit. Have you set a specific period of time when the task should be completed?

For example, if we go back to our fictional online t-shirt store, we can create the following targets:

• Goal 1. Engagement: Increase the number of existing customers served through the online store by 50% by July 2017.
• Goal 2. Engagement: increase brand awareness between April 2017 and July 2017, measured by Google analytics.
• Goal 3: Engagement: Increase email frequency from one email per quarter to one email per week from May 2017 to July 2017.

Stage 3. Strategies for achieving goals

The strategy tells how you are going to achieve your goals. This is a general idea of ​​achieving goals.

Using the example of an online t-shirt store, we will determine what questions need to be answered in the strategy block of your marketing plan.

Goal 1 is to increase brand awareness between April 2017 and July 2017, measured through Google Analytics.

It is necessary to increase the brand presence in certain online channels that are aimed at the audience of football fans.

• What is the most cost-effective way to market?
• Are there our key customers in these channels?
• Where can we get more customer attention?

Study your competitors, understand what online marketing tools they are using and what they are not using, and take advantage of the first movers.

Goal 2 is to increase the number of existing customers served with an online account by 50% by July 2017.

Analyze your existing customer base and how they interact with your online store.

Goal 3 is to increase email frequency from one email per quarter to one email per week from May 2017 to July 2017.

• How does the company currently interact with subscribers?
• Who are your competitors and how do they send mailings?

The answers to these questions will help you determine a strategy to achieve your goals.

Stage 4. Tactics for achieving goals

Tactics contain those specific tools that you plan to use to achieve the goals of your marketing plan. As you draw up your strategy, you will describe each of the tactics in more detail, as well as specify specific KPIs for each tactic.

In the example of a t-shirt store, let's assume that we have chosen three tactics for implementing these strategies: SEO, PPC, and Email Marketing.

Tactic 1 - SEO

When analyzing competitors, it was revealed that one of the key disadvantages of company X is a small marketing budget. However, search engine optimization of the site does provide the company with a field for competition.

To understand the positive impact SEO can have in terms of increasing brand awareness among the target market, it is necessary to conduct a keyword analysis.

Tactic 2 - Pay per click - contextual advertising

As with SEO, keyword research will give you an idea of ​​how much budget you need for contextual advertising. Most of the competing companies do not use a lot of queries in advertising, so here you can benefit. It also helps increase brand awareness.

Tactic 3 - Email Marketing

It is necessary to develop an email marketing strategy so that the existing customer base receives regular messages. The tactics that will be used will include options for what should be included in the content of the emails so that you get enough clicks to the site and conversions to purchases.
This tactic will be to use the existing customer base and encourage them to refer friends, colleagues to join the weekly newsletters.

Stage 5: Actions

The fifth stage of your marketing planning system focuses on how to bring your plans to life. The action section covers what must be done in each of the tactics listed in previous section SOSTAC plan to realize its goals.

To achieve the goals above, we have identified three tactics. Now we list examples of actions required to implement each tactic.

This is not an exhaustive list, it only contains examples and a brief description of what to consider:

Tactic 1: SEO

• Keyword analysis. What keywords are we targeting?
• Page optimization. We must optimize the site pages for key queries in order to provide better rankings in Yandex and Google.
• Content - regular blog posts on the topic of the site.
• Building a link mass. Make a target group of sites where you could post information about your project with a link to it.

Actions for tactics 2: Contextual advertising

• Keyword analysis. What queries can drive profitable traffic?
• Budget.
• Landing pages. What pages will people land on when they enter certain queries?

Tactic Action 3: Email Marketing

• Create email scripts for various actions on the site (subscription, purchase)
• Creation of reporting to analyze the involvement of subscribers in the mailing list
• Analysis of the profitability of mailings

Stage 6. Control of results

The final stage of planning is to provide an opportunity to analyze and evaluate your performance in the future based on the goals set in the second stage.

Think about what to set for tactics that are tied to your goals and set up weekly or monthly monitoring reporting to make sure you are on track to achieve your goals.

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From this article you will learn:

• Why is it needed
• How long to make it
• How to develop a company marketing plan
• How to do it quickly in half an hour
• What mistakes should be avoided

Modern enterprises are constantly in a state of competition with each other. The one that is weaker due to an illiterately developed marketing plan loses. A company's marketing plan is important because it helps drive sales to new level. Let's figure out together how to compose it and what strategy is better to apply.

What is a company marketing plan

Before the leaders modern enterprises in a competitive environment, questions arise on which the future of a company often depends. How to develop further, what mechanisms to use to reduce costs, where to look for and attract potential consumers, what marketing techniques to use to increase profits?

With the correct, competent and effective construction of the plan, you can easily find answers to these and other questions.

A company's marketing plan is a brief description of an algorithm that allows you to quickly find solutions to important production problems. Moreover, this document clearly indicates the timeframes and strategies. It could be one year, two or three.

A plan is being drawn up marketing activities companies as a separate document. Along with financial as well as production plans it is part of the company's strategic business plan. With their help, it is easy to build a general line for the development of the enterprise.

To develop the document, the results of previous studies, data on the study of economic niches in which the enterprise operates are used. Additionally, resources and consumers are analyzed to determine the main goals and objectives. Be sure to indicate the period during which the desired results, indicated earlier, are achieved.

Why is a company marketing plan necessary?

We think this is understandable. The main objectives of this document include the following.

1. A company's marketing plan will help determine its profitability.

Therefore, it is necessary to use terms that everyone will understand - from the head to the junior service personnel. This must be taken into account so that the work of all employees is as productive as possible.

1. For greater productivity, you need to consider how the system works.

From the document it will be clear which department of the company needs to be strengthened and which should be closed. It is important to describe each item in detail and accurately.

1. The marketing plan clearly sets goals and defines methods to achieve them.

It is important to have an additional document if the first does not justify itself.

1. The main purpose of the document is to coordinate the actions of the personnel (workers, employees) and the management (management) of the company.

Thanks to this, the actions of the company's employees will be clear, each of the employees will be well aware of their job responsibilities and perform them.

How long does it take to write a marketing plan for a company?

If the company is large, then the document is developed every year. In order to have a result, specific terms must be indicated, which depend on the size of the company, the scope of its activities.

Typically, the document is drawn up for a period of three to six years and is annually adjusted, the data is adjusted, and changed taking into account new market conditions. After revision, a company's marketing plan is often rewritten.

If the company is small, then according to research conducted in 2017, effective search or SEO marketing is used. It is usually used to promote goods and services on the Internet, along with contextual advertising and SMM.

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Large companies work according to a different scheme, they prefer to use advertising in the media (newspapers, magazines), television, radio.

The frequency of reviewing the marketing plan for small businesses depends on demand, activity needs, which can be determined independently using a SWOT analysis.

Other tactics, goals and methods of promotion can be chosen. As soon as global changes occur in the market, the company most often adjusts the positioning of the product, service, which means that the entire marketing plan is reworked.

Let's look at an example. Company N produces children food premium. In the early years, it was known only to a narrow circle of consumers. This means that the main task of the marketing department is to increase brand awareness. This will definitely be highlighted in the marketing plan of the enterprise.

In a year, when awareness grows, the assortment expands, the document will indicate specific deadlines for holding promotions, a section will appear in which you need to clearly describe advertising campaigns.

What goals should be reflected in the marketing plan of the company

The ultimate goal of a marketing plan is to continuously increase the company's profits.

Many businessmen often forget that marketers cannot decide everything themselves. They do not produce and sell goods and do not provide services, do not work with customers, partners. Therefore, it is important to consider all departments of the company and strengthen the interaction within it in order to constantly increase profits.

All members must participate in the implementation of the marketing plan. labor collective. If this does not happen, all your undertakings will remain on paper, time and effort will be wasted.

All goals must be fixed, fixed with specific dates, by which you can then check the exact deadlines. It might look like this:

• expansion, optimization of the customer base by (date) by (%);
• development of a strategy to increase sales by (date) in (times);
• increase in brand awareness among consumers, target audience by (date) by (%);
• expansion or formation of a new partner and dealer network by (date) by (quantity).

What is the structure of the company's marketing plan

The company's marketing plan consists of several sections.

1. Executive summary (introduction for management) is the first, introductory, section of the document. It indicates a list of tasks, the main goals of the company, its mission and the problems that the business is solving at the time of writing the marketing plan.

2. Evaluation of the company's activities at the current moment. This section clearly highlights the following points:

• Described main segments of the target audience.
• market analysis , including legislative framework, suppliers, forecasts and prospects, features of the industry in which the company operates;
• internal audit, during which the moments hindering the development of the enterprise, as well as mechanisms that can improve the situation, are identified;
• results of a previous SWOT analysis . At the same time, they evaluate the positive and negative factors that will affect your business;
• competitive advantages . This is what you are able to offer your business partners, potential customers. Based on the results obtained, you will be able to effectively promote a product or service.

3. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of your company's competitors. Here you need to describe the development strategy of your competitors, analyze the assortment, prices, their promotion methods, and the features of working with clients.

You can use the services of a "mystery shopper". This will allow you to draw conclusions for improvement further development your business.

4. Development of a commodity strategy for your company. You analyze the product portfolio, sales, consumption volumes and draw conclusions, form recommendations for expanding the business. If necessary, evaluate the product line and the main production technologies.

5. Strategy development. It is necessary to describe the main directions of marketing of your company, how the trademark and the company as a whole are positioned.

Specify measures for working with clients, events that are carried out to attract new business partners, to strengthen the company's position in the market for goods and services. Analyze internal marketing and how you will serve your customers.

6. Analytics. Using special data, analyze and describe external and internal situations (on the market and in the company), possible risks that need to be taken into account in future activities.

Plan and conduct the collection of information, prepare analytical materials, think over measures that can be used in specific situations. Monitor competitors, publicity, market research and describe how it all is implemented in practice.

7 Action plan. Analysis and inclusion in the company's work plan of the activities necessary to achieve the goals that you set for yourself and the employees of the company. It is better if this is a table in which you enter the actions taken to promote a product or service, as well as fix the deadlines, indicate those responsible, etc.

8. Finance. Analyze the main indicators, draw conclusions. They will help you predict sales, see and evaluate additional expenses. Include sales dynamics in the document, break it down by customers, market segments, groups of goods (services), regions.

Be sure to analyze the main indicators of expenses, group them so that later they can be used to draw conclusions on improving sales and the marketing plan as a whole.

9. Implementation of control. This is the last section of your plan. It spells out in detail the main mechanisms and control tools with an exact indication of which divisions of your company will perform a particular item.

This section can include reports, key metrics, and milestones to help draw conclusions.

10. Applications. In this part of the document there will be graphs, tables, analysis of certain provisions of the marketing plan. This way you can track the progress of your business.

As you can see, all elements of the marketing plan are systematized into a list that meets certain areas of activity. It helps to decide specific tasks, eliminate problematic points, etc.

Step-by-step development of a marketing plan for a company

The development of a company's marketing plan consists of several stages. Almost all of them are mandatory.

Planning phase	Description
Analysis of the market for goods or services	No matter how hard we try, we still will not be aware of everything that happens on the market for goods and services. Study the trends. Perhaps those of them that operate on the market today will create competition for you tomorrow. You need to be alert. Study the habits of future and current customers, what has changed in them, their attitude to the quality of goods and services, their cost.
Product Analysis	Be as honest as possible. Remember that consumers will compare your products with competitors. Highlight the disadvantages and advantages. Evaluate the product, whether it is expensive or, conversely, cheap, simple or complex, high-quality or not. Try to understand why customers like the product and what needs to be done to make them buy it.
The target audience	It will be great if you get to know the target audience better. If not, analyze regular customers and draw conclusions about how they are configured for your products or services. Knowing the target audience is the first step to successful product positioning.
Positioning features and main advantages of your product	This point is similar to the second stage, but by turning on the imagination, you can bring your product or service to the ideal. Think about how to make the product more attractive in appearance, improve the composition, if possible.
Strategic planning	Having dealt with competitors, take care of the positioning of the product (product). So you will begin to understand how to act and develop effective strategy promotion. Consider the assortment and how it can be improved, expanded, promoted. Decide which ad is better to choose and predict the possible results.
Drawing up a plan for 1-5 years (depending on the scale)	After receiving all the necessary information, you can paint the strategy for months. Be sure to include the date and month.

Development of a marketing plan according to the SOSTAC model

The SOSTAC structure was established in the 1990s. She is quite reputable and has an excellent reputation. business start-ups and international companies take it as a basis to draw up a marketing plan.

The SOSTAC marketing plan consists of a number of steps.

Stage 1. Analysis of a specific situation

Analyzing the current situation, it is necessary to show the overall picture of the project. For this, the following questions are being worked out:

1. Who are your current clients? Create a detailed portrait of your target audience.
2. Based on your SWOT analysis, draw conclusions about your weaknesses and strengths Oh, possible threats For the company.
3. Analyze competitors. Who are they? On what basis do they compete with you? It could be a product, its price, better customer service, or a different reputation than yours. How exactly do you differ from each other?
4. Make a detailed list of channels that you can use to attract customers. Check the ones that will be the most successful for you. Separate those who perform well from those who perform poorly.

Only after that you will be able to see your potential customers, evaluate their motivation for purchases. Alternatively, you can make a portrait of the client. This will help you get to know your audience better. To do this, you can use the data obtained by the current CRM system after analyzing the history of orders.

From the information collected by your CRM system, you will be able to:

• understand your ratio of male to female clients;
• evaluate profiles based on age, average age and see if it is possible to create categories;
• find out data about the location of your customers, their addresses, what percentage lives in your region;
• study the history of successful purchases and create an overall picture, evaluate the average order, figure out how products differ in volume, color, size from the competition;
• figure out how your customers prefer to pay upon receipt - by cards or cash; how often orders are placed and purchases are made.

With this information, you can proceed to the next step, where we will collect information related to your company.

Consider on specific example. We have data about the target audience. Now let's take two avatars for a virtual online store that sells t-shirts.

Avatar A - Maxim

Maxim is a master of his craft, he is 26 years old, he lives alone, takes pictures one-room apartment in the center of Moscow, not married, has a high income level, as for the capital. The guy is passionate about football and often supports his sport Club. Every year he buys a new colored T-shirt with the logo of his team fan. He does it over the Internet.

It is convenient and comfortable for Maxim to place orders via the Web. He often communicates with friends and acquaintances via social networks, regularly follows the news from the world of domestic and world football, and does not mind getting acquainted with new paraphernalia.

The World Cup is coming soon, and this will provide an opportunity to present a new collection of T-shirts for football fans. Therefore, XXX company can contact Maxim and offer not only a T-shirt of an admirer of his favorite team, but also a unique international T-shirt of an active fan.

How will Maxim interact with your online store? It could be the following diagram.

Maxim gets to know breaking news about holding the World Cup in a fashion blog. He notices that the company offers to take part in a promotion - order a T-shirt with a logo dedicated to the championship at 10% cheaper. To do this, he needs to follow the link to the website of the online store.

Maxim makes a transition and gets to the site of the XXX online store. Here he is offered big choice quality T-shirts that he can order at a 10% discount. Maxim chooses a T-shirt of the color, pattern, size he needs, and then completes the purchase by paying for it with a credit/debit card.

Avatar B - Margarita

Margarita is a professional in her field, she is 33 years old, the girl is in a relationship. Margarita follows the fashion world and tries to place orders through the online store.

And her boyfriend, a fan of the football team and the local club, also likes to keep up with sports fashion. He buys jerseys from his team's fans every year.

The World Cup is coming soon, and Margarita knows about it. She, too, can become a customer of the XXX online store. A girl can buy a T-shirt for both herself and her boyfriend - together they are going to support the football team in the championship.

An exemplary scenario of Margarita's interaction with an online store: a potential client received a letter via e-mail with an offer from an online store. This newsletter contains an online advertisement of a company that offers to order a T-shirt with the symbols of the championship using a promo code.

Margarita understands that this is a chance to give her beloved boyfriend a T-shirt, buy the same one for herself and save money. The girl goes to the website of the online store. To get information, she calls the support service and places an order over the phone.

To successfully promote an online store, you need to create two or three customer avatars for a separate group of products that have similar properties.

Stage 2. Goal setting

This part of the marketing plan should focus on your goals, which should be as specific as possible. Goals should be in line with the following:

• concreteness. Select the indicators that you will focus on.
• measurability. Decide how you will evaluate the effectiveness, exercise control.
• Reachability. How and when can you reach your goal?
• Realism or Valence. It takes into account what marketing tools you will use.
• Time limitation. See if the time is clearly indicated.

Continuing with the example of an online store selling t-shirts, the goals might be:

• Interaction: it is necessary to increase the number (flow) of customers by 50% by March 2018.
• attraction. The goal is to increase your brand awareness. Tracking with Google Analytics. Date: March - July 2018.
• Interaction. The mailing list of letters is increasing systematically: previously they sent one letter per quarter, now one letter per week, starting from April 2018 to July 2018.

Stage 3. Strategy for achieving goals

Your strategy should indicate that you are ready to achieve your goals.

Goal 1. Increase your brand awareness. Tracking with Google Analytics. Date: March - August 2018.

You should maximize the presence of your brand (product or service) in fan-oriented places online:

• Determine a cost-effective way to market.
• Are there any customers on these online platforms?
• Where exactly can you get the attention of potential customers?

You can achieve your goal only when you study competitive companies, so you understand what basic tools they prefer.

Goal 2. Engagement: Need to increase existing customer flow by 50% by April 2019.

Here you should carefully analyze the existing customer base and identify what each of its representatives prefers.

Goal 3. The frequency of emails is steadily increasing. Previously, they sent a letter in 3-4 months, now in 7-10 days, starting from April to July 2018.

By answering the questions below, you will determine the frequency of sending emails:

• How does the company currently interact with subscribers?
• Who are your competitors and how do they send mailings?

Stage 4. Tactics for achieving goals

Here you need to consider the main tools that will help you achieve the goals of your marketing plan. There may be several tactics.

Suppose you have chosen methods such as SEO optimization, contextual advertising, and email marketing. Let's consider them in detail.

During the analysis, key shortcomings were identified - a small budget for marketing and research within its framework. To determine the direction of marketing forces, it is necessary to analyze the requests for a specific product, in our case, T-shirts with the logos of football clubs.

The second tactic is focused on contextual advertising, that is, on payment for clicks made. Having determined the keywords, you will understand how much budget you need to allocate for contextual advertising.

The third tactic is email marketing.

You must develop a mailing strategy so that your customers receive emails regularly. The main purpose of the message is to make potential customers go to your site and order a product or use a service.

Stage 5. Active actions

At this stage, you embody what you have worked out into reality. It is important to re-examine the goals carefully in order to follow them.

Plan of exemplary active actions.

• SEO.

We analyze key queries. We optimize the main pages for keywords for better ranking of site pages by Yandex and Google search engines. Regularly (once every 2-3 days) we publish content. We create a reference mass. We place information on other sites.

• Contextual advertising.

Based on the analysis and processing of requests, we analyze the approximate traffic. We determine the budget and the main pages of the site (target) to which people will come for key queries.

• Email marketing.

First, we create a script for letters that your subscribers will receive. We analyze the involvement of recipients in the mailing list, profitability.

Stage 6. Control of the received results

This is the last step that will help you evaluate the previously announced goals. This analysis will allow you to draw conclusions - whether you are acting correctly.

Shortest company marketing plan

The shortest but useful plan The company's marketing was created by Kelly Odel. It is suitable for any, even the newest idea, product or service. It is enough to fill in the table, and you will immediately see the big picture, including the future, which will help you draw a conclusion about the prospects for business development.

3 Common Mistakes in Developing a Company Marketing Plan

1. Inconsistent promotion

If you don't have a clear strategy in place, your company marketing plan can fail right away. Here, not only the presence of bright and memorable symbols, logo, but also the entire marketing program in general plays an important role.

1. Save justifiably

Advertising spending should pay off. What determines the effectiveness of the tools used to promote a product or service? There are many factors, including: product features, knowledge of potential consumers, goals set for the business.

At the same time, it is important to understand that the larger the company and the wider the goals it sets, the more expensive the business.

1. Don't have high expectations

Don't assume that there will be results immediately after implementing a marketing plan. Not always well-thought-out stages of promotion will give an instant effect. Keep a balance between what you promise in reality and advertising.

A company's marketing plan is a blueprint that outlines its overall marketing strategy for the coming year. It must indicate who you are positioning your products for, how you will sell it to the target category of buyers, what techniques you will use to attract new customers and increase sales. The purpose of a marketing plan is to outline in detail how to market your products and services to your target market.

Steps

Part 1

Conducting a situational analysis

Consider the goals of your company. The purpose of a situational analysis is to understand the current marketing situation your company is in. Based on this understanding, it is possible to think over and implement necessary changes in business. Start by addressing the company's mission and goals (if your company doesn't already have them, these need to be defined first) and see if your current marketing plan is helping you achieve those goals.

• For example, your company performs snow removal and other related winter views works. You have set yourself the goal of increasing revenue by 10% through the conclusion of new contracts. Do you have a marketing plan that describes how you can attract additional contracts? If a plan exists, is it effective?

1. Examine your current marketing strengths and weaknesses. How is your company currently attractive to customers? What makes competing companies attractive to customers? It is very likely that it is your strengths that attract buyers to you. Knowing your strengths gives you an important marketing advantage.

   Gather information about external opportunities and threats to your company. They will be external characteristics companies that depend on competition, fluctuations in market factors, as well as on customers and buyers. The goal is to identify the various factors that can affect the business. This will then allow you to adjust your marketing plan accordingly.

   Designate responsible persons. When preparing your marketing plan, you will need to assign individuals responsible for specific aspects of your company's market promotion. Think about which employees will be best able to perform specific functions of the marketing policy, and determine their responsibilities. You will also need to consider a system for assessing the success of these official duties.

   Announce your marketing goals. What do you want to achieve with your marketing plan? Do you see the end goal as expanding your customer base, informing existing customers about new services and quality improvements, expanding into other regions or demographics, or something entirely different? It is your goals that will form the basis for preparing the plan.

   Develop marketing strategies to achieve your goals. Once you have clearly defined your marketing goals and perspectives, you will need to consider specific actions to achieve them. There are many various types marketing strategies, but the most common ones are listed below.

   Approve the budget. You may have great ideas to promote your business and expand your customer base, but with a limited budget, you may need to partially rethink your strategy. The budget should be realistic and reflect both the current state of the business and its potential growth in the future.

Part 4

Marketing plan preparation

Start with explanatory note. This section of the marketing plan should include basic information about your products or services, as well as briefly describe the general content of the entire document in one or two paragraphs of text. The priority preparation of an explanatory note will allow you to subsequently expand and describe in more detail certain points in the main text of the document.

• Know that the prepared marketing plan is extremely useful to give for familiarization both to the direct employees of your company and its consultants.

1. Describe the target market. The second section of the marketing plan will address the results of your research and describe the company's target market. Text must not be written difficult language, indications of simple key points will be sufficient. You can start by describing the demographics of your market (including the age, gender, location, and industry of your customers, if applicable), and then move on to identifying your customers' top preferences for your products or services.

2. List your goals. This section should not exceed one page of text. It must indicate the marketing goals of the company for the coming year. Remember that the goals you set must satisfy five qualities: be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.

   • When reviewing your marketing plan annually, be objective. If something is not working or someone in charge is not acting in the best interests of the company, you can openly discuss with the staff the existing problems and non-performance of duties. If things are going really badly, you may need to prepare a completely different marketing plan. It is in this situation that it is useful to hire an outside consultant to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the old marketing plan and restructure it in the right direction.

• Be sure to include in your marketing plan the needs and ideas for each department in your company (and even an employee, if appropriate). It is also very important that the marketing plan is linked and well integrated with the business plan and mission of the company, its public image and core values.
• Include in your marketing plan any tables, graphs, etc. that you need to create in the process of collecting important information. In addition, it will be useful to include tables explaining its key provisions in the plan.

Warnings

• Revise the marketing plan at least once a year to check the success of the strategies used and to redo those parts of the plan that were unsuccessful.
• Many are critical important factors marketing plan are dynamic. If they change over time, the marketing plan needs to be revised.

We offer a ready-made checklist with which you can draw up a ready-made marketing plan from scratch. The article details the structure and lists the main sections and marketing plan. We will tell you in what sequence it is more convenient to draw up a marketing plan, which elements of a marketing plan are mandatory, and which components can sometimes be missed. We believe that our checklist is suitable for protecting the promotion strategy of any product, because it is an exhaustive list of important information on the basis of which key strategic decisions are made.

The marketing plan has a fairly clear and logical structure, and its development is not a one-day process. You will need a lot of time to collect detailed information about consumers, to study the features and conditions of the market, to determine competitive advantage goods and much more. Get ready to process and summarize many different facts, consider more than one alternative for business development. Don't be afraid to take the time to analyze different options strategies.

On average, drawing up a high-quality marketing plan can take (depending on the size of the business and the number of product groups in the company's portfolio) from 1-3 months. And if marketing planning be engaged simultaneously with the solution of current issues, then lay down for this process at least 2-4 months. 50% of this time you will spend on gathering information, 40% on analyzing and considering alternatives, and only 10% on drawing up the marketing plan itself.

The structure of a standard marketing plan includes 8 elements and is as follows:

What is an Executive Summary

"Executive Summary" - summary or summary key areas of the marketing plan. In this section of the marketing plan, they try to set out the main conclusions, recommendations and goals of the company for the next few years. This section is the last one you complete, but when you present your marketing plan, you start with this section.

The practice of laying out the key takeaways at the start of any presentation helps to tailor the guide to the desired format of the presentation, allows you to assess the main strategy without detailed study of the facts and prepare questions. In this section of the marketing plan, it is very common to also include content, presentation duration, presentation format, and preferred form of feedback.

Situational analysis and conclusions

The situational analysis section is designed to quickly get a complete picture of the market, its size, trends and features. Such an analysis helps to explain the choice of certain actions in the marketing strategy of the product. The main components of a situational analysis are:

• Analysis of the company's internal environment and resources, including an assessment of the level of achievement of current goals and objectives
• Analysis of consumer behavior in the market, assessment of the reasons for the purchase and refusal of the company's product
• Analysis external factors company, competitor behavior and key market trends

You can read more about an example of a situational or business analysis of a company in our article:

SWOT analysis and competitive advantages

Any situational analysis ends with a compilation, with a description of the strengths and weaknesses company, key opportunities and threats to sales and profit growth. Based on the results of the SWOT analysis, the following is formed:

• main product of the company
• indicating the development vector of product positioning for 3-5 years
• tactical action plan for the use and development of opportunities
• tactical action plan to minimize identified threats
• main

Definition of marketing goals and objectives

The first step in any marketing strategy is to set performance targets for the coming year. There are two types of goals that should be recorded in a marketing plan: business goals and marketing goals. Business goals relate to issues such as the position of the product in the market (share or place among competitors), the level of sales, profits and profitability. Marketing objectives consider issues such as attracting new customers, retaining current customers, increasing the frequency and duration of use of the product.

Protection of the marketing strategy

The presentation of the marketing strategy is the main section of the organization's marketing plan. On the this stage presentation of the marketing plan, it is important to say about the following elements of the marketing strategy:

Without this section, the marketing plan will not be complete and not a single manager will approve the developed programs for the development of the product and its promotion to the market. The section begins with a presentation of the business model or P&L, which shows projected sales growth from the programs, required program budget, net income, and return on sales. The subsequent steps in this section are comments and clarifications on the P&L model:

• Budget structure with division into main cost items
• Overview of the main sources of sales growth and their correlation with budget items
• Assumptions used in the construction of the model in the field of cost growth, inflation and price level

Let's consider the marketing plan of OOO "Lux" as an integral part of the production (internal) business plan designed to plan the production of executive class business souvenirs (desktop writing sets, ...) with the customer's branding.

The business plan for the production of new products was made taking into account the results of the marketing research of the market and on the basis of the marketing plan. Consider the marketing plan of Lux LLC.

Preamble:

1. Purpose:

The Marketing Action Plan of LLC “Lux” is designed to implement the strategy of LLC “Lux” for the introduction of executive class business souvenirs (desk sets, …..) into production.

2. Purpose of the plan:

The plan is aimed at increasing the total volume of sales of LLC "Lux" products for 2002 as a whole by 30% compared to 2001 (in comparable prices) and provides for an increase in quarterly sales volumes compared to the corresponding periods of 2001. based on available data on the state of the market of the South Federal District and prevailing trends in demand for promotional products.

3. Short description plan content (summary):

3.1. Product and technology analysis

Measures for the analysis of the product are aimed at maintaining and developing the competitiveness of the company's products. A selection of measures is envisaged taking into account the prospective orientation of the enterprise to target consumer markets.

A number of technological and organizational measures aimed at improving the quality and technical level of products, reducing the lead time for orders, reducing stocks.

3.2. Consumer Analysis

The main attention is supposed to be paid to the 3 main groups of consumers today, who have the greatest solvency, who have the most pronounced need for business gifts: small commercial and industrial enterprises; machine-building enterprises; administrative bodies.

For these groups of consumers, it is planned to build special relationships, as well as to search for new consumers, for which it is necessary to clarify and update existing databases, group data, improve the technology of working with the consumer when placing an order with the inclusion of relevant provisions in job description personnel.

3.3. Competitor analysis

It is supposed to determine the range of potential competitors of Lux LLC, their strengths and weaknesses. Clarify prices for competitors' products, the degree of competition for individual commodity items.

3.4. Price policy

Based on the analysis of the structure of the cost of production of Lux LLC, the prices of competitors and the mass of profits for each commodity item, develop a unified system of selling prices and discounts.

The main types of advertising for 2002 are supposed to be mailing lists with obligatory phone calls to the most important consumers. Take part in the exhibition "Advertising 2002". Prepare product catalogs. Prepare a number of publications in the newspaper "Gorod N", "Vecherny Rostov", in specialized publications on the profile of consumers.

Marketing activities for 2002:

Tables 3 and 4 show the marketing activities of Lux LLC for 2002. All products of the enterprise are divided into assortment groups indicated in the table. Tasks for the growth of such types of assortment as leather accessories (purses, business card holders, key holders, organizers, folders), writing sets, leather briefcases are set at a rate of 30% in relation to 2001.

The average percentage increase is also assumed to be 30%. The sales volume of other types of assortment is planned to remain at the same level, gradually making the transition to the production of elite business gifts, achieving that the sales volume of these types of products amounted to 75% of the total sales volume.

Table 3

Sales Growth Rates When Implementing a Marketing Plan

Product group name			Deviation, + -
Quantity, pcs.	Amount, rub.	Quantity, pcs.	Amount, rub.	Quantity, pcs.	Amount, rub.
At actual prices	In comparable prices
1. Leather accessories
2. Key rings
3. Lighters
4. Writing sets
6. Printing products
7. Briefcases
10. Table clock

The purpose of marketing is to determine the needs and demands of consumers, establish a system of consumer preferences (what consumers prefer more, what less, what they pay attention to first of all, what second, etc.), find out where and how consumers will buy a product, how they will learn about its advantages and simply about its existence (i.e., determine what forms and methods of promoting goods and services on the market are best used), why they will give preference to your product when compared with products of competitors, etc. Therefore, the concept of "marketing" in broad sense is not limited to studying only consumer demand, but also determines how to conduct a campaign to promote new products on the market, build an advertising strategy, etc.

Table 4

Marketing plan activities

	Events	Period of execution	Executor	Price
	Product Analysis
Nomenclature expansion		Marketing department
Supplier selection
Introduction of hot stamping with color change
Introduction of laser engraving
Improving the quality of tampons
	Consumer Analysis
Acquisition of the database “Business Card”
Refinement of the database of regular customers 2000-2001.
Analysis of payments for various groups of consumers for 2000-2001.
The same, taking into account the assortment groups
Identification of target consumer groups and development of recommendations on a marketing strategy in each target segment
Inventory of intermediary firms
Perform analysis of prospective consumers based on press materials	During a year
	Price policy
Perform a price level analysis compared to competitors in terms of various types products	March, June, September, December
Perform 2002 sales volume analysis by product type	March, June, September, December
Pricing policy adjustment	Of necessity
	Competitors
Make lists of competitors
Compile a list of strengths and weaknesses of competitors compared to Lux LLC
Collect information about the regional activities of competitors	During a year
Cooperation with Versiya LLC in fulfilling orders for full-color printing	January June	Production Department
	During a year	Marketing department
	During a year
Posting ads	2 times a month
Production of souvenirs with the symbols of "Lux" LLC		Production Department
Preparation and publication of the catalog