Date-11/08/2010

Market Goals and Strategies

A marketing plan is an essential ingredient of your business plan. It makes up the meat of the overall business plan, and may require quite a bit of research on your part to do it right. A more complex plan could entail hiring a marketing specialist to ensure the completeness of your plan.

There are many different ways to go about crafting your marketing plan, but the first step is to create an outline. These important contents of a marketing plan should be included:

Description of the market, target customers, market opportunities, marketing strategies, sales strategies, advertising and promotion, pricing strategy, competitive analysis and market demographics.

Marketing means getting customers to consider using your business, whereas sales refer to the actual means of getting the business. As you can see, there’s a fine line between defining the two strategies. That’s where decisions on whether or not to use a marketing specialist come into play. Obviously, cost will be a factor in making your decision.

Setting marketing goals and objectives with concrete time periods is the first step in creating a successful marketing path. Designing the plan is next.

A marketing plan usually consists of three types of marketing activities—self-promotion, media relations and advertising. Self-promotion is communicating your company’s message through corporate identity, newsletters, direct mail, special events, trade shows, brochures and a Web site.

Media relations are getting writers, reporters and editors interested in promoting your business through their own publications. You can help this along with by using timely, informative press releases.

Advertising refers to your business paying for the promotion in some form or other including print, online and on-air services.

Please contact us for more information on any aspect of market planning and implementation.

Regards,

Manish Kumar Pandey