Create a 90-Day Marketing Plan

There are times throughout the year that we need to evaluate how well our marketing plan is doing and consider changes that we may need to make to improve it's effectiveness. I often suggest that companies try something new, rather than creating a one-year marketing plan or a five-year marketing plan, why not try creating a 90-day plan?

While it's important to always monitoring your marketing it is vital in this economy to be diligent and watch where you spend your marketing dollars as well as track how effective your marketing campaigns are.

Defining Your Market in 7 Steps

You've come up with a great idea for a business but you're not ready to roll yet. Before you go any further, the next step is figuring out who your market is.

There are two basic markets you can sell to: consumer and business. These divisions are fairly obvious. For example, if you are selling women's clothing from a retail store, your target market is consumers; if you are selling office supplies, your target market is businesses (this is referred to as "B2B" sales). In some cases -- for example, if you run a printing business -- you may be marketing to both businesses and individual consumers.

No business -- particularly a small one -- can be all things to all people. The more narrowly you can define your target market, the better. This process is known as creating a niche and is key to success for even the biggest companies. Walmart and Tiffany are both retailers, but they have very different niches: Walmart caters to bargain-minded shoppers, while Tiffany appeals to upscale jewelry consumers.

How To Write A Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is a document that outlines a set of actions necessary in order to meet specific objectives.

It’s one of those things many of us, especially those who have been doing search marketing for a while, probably keep largely in our heads. We know roughly where we’re going, the strategies needed to get there, and the objective is to get great rankings and increased traffic. So who needs to write it down?

Here’s a couple of good reasons.

Writing forces an analytic approach. The act of writing something down often brings about new ideas because it gets us out of the routine of “just doing”. Secondly, writing plans helps us write better proposals. A marketing plan is about both an analysis and a form of communication. It’s a means to get across your ideas to clients and other partners and convince them of the merits of what we’re doing.

How To Find And Sell To Your Target Market

Part 1: Finding Your Target Market

When I teach small business classes on marketing strategy, I often ask participants the question, "Who are your customers? Who will buy your product?" I am often surprised that otherwise savvy small business people either have no idea who will buy from them, or they assume that 'everyone' will.

Assumptions like this can lead to wrong decisions, wrong pricing, wrong marketing strategy – and ultimately, business failure.

The most successful small businesses understand that only a limited number of people will buy their product or service. The task then becomes determining, as closely as possible, exactly who those people are, and 'targeting' the business's marketing efforts and dollars toward them.

Develop Your Annual Marketing Plan

An Eight Week Marketing Course

In January many businesses sit down to revisit their business plan, but pay no attention to their marketing plan. There is never a better time than the end of the year or beginning of a new year to sit down and reflect on what worked for you and what didn't. It's also a great time to develop a marketing calendar for the upcoming year.

Marketing Principles Learned from Volkswagen

What is the most important marketing principle?

If someone asked you this question, regardless of whether or not you are affiliated in marketing, what would be your answer?

Loyalty? Focus? Customer Service? Unique Selling?

Developing a Marketing Plan

Marketing takes time, money, and lots of preparation. One of the best ways to prepare yourself is to develop a solid marketing plan. A strong marketing plan will ensure you’re not only sticking to your schedule, but that you’re spending your marketing funds wisely and appropriately.

What can a Marketing Plan do for Your Small Business?

A marketing plan includes everything from understanding your target market and your competitive position in that market, to how you intend to reach that market (your tactics) and differentiate yourself from your competition in order to make a sale.

Five Questions to Ask When Creating an Integrated Marketing Plan

Integrated marketing plan

They say timing is everything. And while “they” probably weren’t thinking about marketing, this old adage certainly applies. Success in marketing can only happen when you reach your potential customers at the right place at the right time, which is why having an integrated marketing plan is so important.
An integrated marketing plan uses a cohesive look and feel and complimentary messaging across multiple customer touch points—the company’s website, email newsletters, sales dialogue, print ads, and so forth. The purpose is simple: be in as many places as your customer may be to reinforce your selling points. At the end of the day, no matter how great your offering, if your potential customers don’t know it exists, how can there be a sale?

Channel Your Internal Marketing Warrior: 4 Tips for Strengthening Your Marketing Plan

In March of this year I made a decision: I wanted to get healthier.  The problem I have always faced is that I didn’t see the point of exercise, just for the sake of exercise.  Treadmills and stationary bicycles never did much for me, but I was looking for a way to regain some focus and start down a healthier path.
About a month ago I spoke with my good friend Ali who had recently started a training program to become a yoga instructor.  She convinced me to attend a class with her and I even though I’ve done yoga before, this was an entirely new experience.  After 75 minutes in a sweltering room (enduring one of the toughest workouts I’ve had in a while) the strangest thing happened. I felt stronger, lighter, and more focused.
Many times as marketers we get caught up in daily tasks and lose focus of what is really important.  When we lose focus, we may become uninspired, lazy, and complacent.  It is undoubtedly just as difficult, yet as essential, to breath new life into our marketing plans as it is to jumpstart our bodies.  The question is: where do we begin on the road to creating a “healthier” internet marketing strategy?

Social Media Marketers Plan Increased SEO, Email Efforts

More than 3 in 5 social media marketers plan to increase their search engine optimization (SEO - 68%) and email marketing (61%) efforts in the next year, finds Social Media Examiner in an April 2012 report. These were the top non-social areas for increased activity by social media marketers in 2011 also, though both saw a slight decrease this year. SEO is a more popular area for increased activity among B2B than B2C respondents (67% vs. 62%), while those with 3 or more years of experience (74%) are more likely than the average to indicate increased activities in this channel. By contrast, those new to social media are more likely than experienced social media marketers to say they will increase email marketing this year (64% vs. 57%).

How to Build a Result Oriented Social Media Marketing Plan

The Internet is turning into a social encounter that nobody can deny

There a many different route available for a regular internet marketer, thanks to the social environment of the internet. You can now converse with your targeted audience and feel valuable. That is the influence of social media marketing. You can use many different approaches to study, comprehend, cater to and give your targeted market the things that they want. It just became even more effortless to probe into their mind to make, advertise and sell services that people are wanting to purchase. This has never happened in the earlier days of the web.

How to Make a Media Marketing Plan for a Restaurant

A marketing plan is a document that a business prepares to lay out its strategy for making its product or service both visible and appealing to prospective customers. A media marketing plan focuses on marketing through media, as opposed to direct marketing or guerrilla marketing. For restaurants, effective media marketing can be a key ingredient of a successful business strategy.

Step 1

Write an explanation of the challenges your business faces. Describe your competitors. List any detrimental public perceptions that you need to overcome. Give specific numbers and dates for goals in areas such as sales and expansion.

The Strategy Pyramid helps you manage marketing activities

The Strategy Pyramid places strategy at the top, supported by tactics in the middle, and programs at the base. Strategy means nothing without tactics and programs to make it real.

This illustration shows a basic Strategy Pyramid for marketing plans.
The Strategy Pyramid emphasizes the practical importance of building a solid marketing plan structure. Most marketing plans are developed from the top-level strategy first.
Strategy, at the top of the pyramid, is a matter of focusing on specific markets, market needs, and product or service offerings. Tactics follow and set the marketing message and the way it should be transmitted. Programs, at the base of the pyramid, provide the specifics of implementation. Programs include specific milestone dates, expense budgets, and projected sales results.

Το Business Plan περιλαμβάνει ενα Marketing Plan

Η δημιουργία ενός Business Plan, περιλαμβάνει τη δημιουργία ενός Marketing Plan.

Η σωστή προοπτική

Για την Δημιουργία ενός Μarketing Plan, πρώτα θα αναπτύξουμε περιληπτικά τα απαραίτητα για τη δημιουργία ενός Business plan.
Και αυτό επειδή οι αρχικές ερωτήσεις και απαντήσεις που δίνουμε, για την δημιουργία του Marketing Plan δίνουν στο Business Plan την κατεύθυνση που χρειάζεται.
1. Ποιους προσπαθούμε να προσεγγίσουμε και πώς θα τους προσεγγίσουμε;
2. Ποια είναι η αρχική και τρέχουσα δαπάνη διαφήμισης στον προϋπολογισμό μας;
3. Πώς θα παρακολουθούμε τα αποτελέσματα;

How to Write a Strategic Plan

Not to oversimplify how to create a strategic plan, but by placing all the parts of a plan into three areas, you can clearly see how the pieces fit together. The three pieces of the puzzle are:

• Where are we now?
• Where are we going?
• How will we get there?

Each part has certain elements to show you how and where things fit it.

Δημιουργία πλάνου μάρκετινγκ και πωλήσεων

Η δημιουργία μιας επιτυχημένης στρατηγικής μάρκετινγκ, η αναζήτηση ευκαιριών για την πώληση προϊόντων και υπηρεσιών καθώς η αποτελεσματικότερη επαφή με τους τρέχοντες και τους μελλοντικούς πελάτες είναι μια απαιτητική εργασία.
Αν αναρωτιέστε εάν υπάρχουν τρόποι να καταστήσετε την ανάπτυξη της πολιτικής μάρκετινγκ που εφαρμόζετε πιο αποτελεσματική, θα πρέπει να αναλογιστείτε τα εξής:

MARKETING PLAN

Ένα marketing plan είναι απαραίτητο για κάθε επιχείρηση που θέλει να προβάλει τα προϊόντα/ υπηρεσίες της σωστά και αποτελεσματικά.  Η δημιουργία του marketing plan είναι μεν μια χρονοβόρα διαδικασία αλλά αξίζει πραγματικά τον κόπο γιατί θα σας «γλιτώσει» πολύ χρόνο στο μέλλον.  Το marketing plan θα σας βοηθήσει να δείτε καθαρά που «βαδίζει» η επιχείρησή σας αλλά και τι ακριβώς θέλετε να πετύχετε κατά την διάρκεια της πορείας αυτής.