Many people dream of working for themselves and running their own business to be in control of their own work life, by deciding what they work on and when they work. However, although going it alone offers extra freedom, it can be hard to take the leap from employment to entrepreneurship.
Getting your new start-up off the ground can feel like the hardest part, but with the right guidance and some careful planning, you will soon be a lot closer to turning your ideas into reality.
When starting up your own business an essential part of the planning stage is producing a marketing plan. Thinking about how to market a new business is often an afterthought, and understandably so if you’ve never created a marketing plan before, but putting a plan together can help to firm up your business idea and offer a new perspective on your start-up.
Writing a marketing plan needn’t be complicated, follow these jargon-busting steps to put together a marketing strategy for your new business:
Executive Summary
The executive summary is an introduction to the business and provides a brief overview of the content of the marketing plan and the marketing strategy and is often easier to write at the end.
SWOT Analysis
The SWOT analysis section of the plan identifies the business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
The strengths and weaknesses element of the analysis refers to the internal factors of your business. The opportunities and threats section of the SWOT analysis is used to focus on external factors including potential competitors.
Target Market
This section focuses attention on potential customers. Consider who will want to use the product or service, what are their characteristics? Identifying the target market for the product or service right from the beginning will inform the best marketing methods which can be implemented to reach them.
Competitor Analysis
Knowing who your potential customers are is all well and good, but identifying your competitors is just as crucial. Taking the time to conduct some research on competitors and what they have to offer customers is vital and will help to inform the position your business occupies in the market.
USP
Once main competitors have been identified and researched it is time to turn the focus back to your start-up and think about its USP.
As promised this is a jargon-busting guide to writing a marketing plan, and ‘USP’ is one of the most overused jargon terms bandied around in the world of marketing. However overused it may be a business’s USP or unique selling proposition is hugely important, especially so for start-ups entering a highly competitive market. Take time out to consider what makes your business stand out from the rest, what your product or service can offer that competing products or services can’t provide a logical approach to putting together a marketing strategy. Spending time considering and identifying a unique selling proposition can potentially help your business thrive in an already crowded sector.
Marketing Mix
Another section to include in the marketing plan is another jargon term, which is the marketing mix. You’re sure to have heard the term marketing mix before, but what does it mean? The marketing mix is another overused term favored by marketers, but for a good reason. The marketing mix provides the framework for the marketing strategy and can be used as a kind of marketing checklist to ensure that important marketing considerations are not missed out.
The marketing mix is also known as the ‘4 Ps of marketing.’ The marketing mix and 4 Ps refer to a marketing strategy covering the product, price, place, and promotion of a business. The marketing mix can also be referred to as the ‘5 Ps of marketing’ to add people to the mix.
Here’s how to include the marketing mix aka 4 Ps in a marketing plan:
Product: It may sound obvious, but this ‘P’ refers to the product or service that the business offers, whether it’s a new glow in the dark nail varnish, or a day return trip to the moon. Included in the product ‘P’ are the product or services features, appearance, and packaging.
Price: Price is one of the most critical elements of the marketing mix. As well as reflecting how much money the product will make, ‘price’ also identifies where it sits in the market and its position within the market in comparison with competing products. The price will also impact on the marketing strategies used, for example, a high priced, top of the range item will be marketed very differently compared with a low price item, and will be perceived differently by customers.
Place: Place refers to how potential customers will buy your product. Distribution is an important factor here; after all, if a product isn’t easily accessible customers won’t be able to buy it. Consider how your target market likes to shop, e.g. on the high street or online and then ensure that the product is easy for them to find.
Promotion: Promotion deals with how potential customers are made aware of products. Traditional advertising in the mainstream media, social media, and SEO for increased online presence are just some of the options to consider when deciding on promotion.
Monitoring and Measuring
Regularly monitoring the marketing campaign will ensure that all the hard work of putting together a marketing plan doesn’t go to waste.
Putting in place measures for success allows for monitoring of the strategy’s progress, and for it to be tweaked where necessary for the marketing strategy to maintain its effectiveness.
Of course, measures depend on the focus of the marketing strategy. For a digital marketing strategy that aims to raise brand awareness, criteria may include the amount of social media interaction achieved, Google ranking and website page views.
Whichever way you decide to monitor and analyze the results of your marketing strategy it is crucial to do so frequently and to track trends. Regular monitoring allows the plan to be quickly and easily amended to achieve the desired results.