Plan your Market, Market your Plan

How often does a company lack a sales and marketing plan? Or worse, has one but never implements or reviews it during the fiscal year? Here's a typical scenario I find as a marketing and communication consultant. Owner A distributes widgets. When he started the business three years ago, he didn't have time (or so he thought) to create a marketing plan. His decisions regarding marketing were similar to a game of darts—aim at the bull's-eye in hopes of scoring higher than your opponent. At first, Owner A relied heavily on his connections to grow sales. This strategy worked until he exhausted his network. Then Owner A dabbled in coupon mailings and newspaper and phone book ads, until one day, he exhausted a large amount of funds with radio spots. After three years, Owner A has no idea why he can't generate substantial sales from his marketing strategy.

The truth is Owner A doesn't have a strategy. To succeed, he needs to plan his market and then market his plan.

Understand your customer's point of view
As a business owner, do you know what your customers want? Quality widgets? Excellent customer service? Education? Good prices? All of the above? This may seem rudimentary, but many business owners don't know what their customer's point of view is when it comes to their products or services. Before you can plan your sales and marketing strategy, you need to understand who your customers are and what their needs and expectations are.

Perform this exercise: Identify your customers and who your potential customers should be; then list what they need to be happy. Now contact several of your loyal customers, some you don't know well, and a few who you lost. Tell them you are planning this year's sales and marketing plan and would like to know how you could service them better. Ask whether they are pleased with your widgets. What features do they look for when it comes to the product or service? Where did they first hear about your company? Some of the best (and free) marketing research comes from your existing and, unfortunately, lost customers. Consider a survey to obtain similar information in a more formal way.

What did you learn?: Now that you know the customers' points of view about your business, product and service (instead of what you thought) evaluate your company's strengths and weaknesses. List them. Can you see where your previous marketing strategies failed to meet your customers' expectations or needs and where they succeeded? What new and creative marketing ideas do you have knowing this information?

Watch your competition
Remember the scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone conveys an important rule of business: "Keep your friends close but your enemies closer?" Think of your competition in this way. By identifying and understanding your competitors' moves (their sales and marketing strategy), you can better understand and succeed in your marketplace. What does your competition do well? What do they do poorly? Ask these questions in context to what you gleaned earlier from your customers and keep their wish list in mind. After evaluating your competition, ask: "How can I give my customers what they want and do better than my competition? How can I communicate this best to my targeted customers?"

The plan: Keep it simple, execute and review it often!

The best sales and marketing plans are those that are implemented and measured throughout the year. I call them "living plans" as opposed to dust collectors. Clear, concise plans with an easy layout for documenting implementation processes and measuring success are more likely to be used by staff. There are numerous examples, but the elements of a good working plan are the same. They include:

Executive Summary: Briefly describe your organization in about 500 words or less. What is its name, location, length of time in business, growth history and targeted customer(s)?

Marketing Objectives and Goals: What do you hope to accomplish this year? What is your sales goal and how much of an increase from last year does it represent? What will your market share be? What is its percentage change from last year? Who have you identified as your customer(s) and what benefits will you provide or produce for this target market? Briefly describe your marketing strategy for the coming year.

Situation Analysis: Remember all that great information you obtained through your customer inquiries and identifying your company's strengths and weaknesses? Document what you learned and describe in greater detail your operations, product or services, sales trends, comparisons with last year, and the company's strengths and weaknesses. What changes have occurred in the marketplace that may have impacted your business, and how did the company address those changes? What has your competition been up to and how did they address change? And again, always remember your customers. How do they see your business? What do they need to be happy?

Marketing Strategy/Objectives: What marketing strategies are you using and which ones will you undertake to reach your goals? Identify and list each strategy. Do these strategies make sense for your business? Will they have a significant, positive impact? If not, why are you including them? Is it because you have always done it this way? Here is where you need to be painfully honest about what has and has not worked, and what will work. Summarize why you have chosen these strategies.

Marketing Tactics: This is a list of every marketing tactic you plan to implement this year and a brief description of the tactic. Faced with a limited budget, it is important to focus on doing a few things well rather than doing a bunch of things poorly. Try to choose two tools—direct mail and newspaper, for example—and put together a campaign with a consistent message and frequency, which is critical for success.

Budget and Implementation Plan: How you handle the budget section of your plan depends greatly on the size of your organization. Large companies maintain very detailed budgets and often have a whole department of personnel to create and manage the budget. Smaller organizations typically list out their budget within the plan by main objectives. Regardless of your business size, your budget should include the costs associated with each of the tactics listed or be categorized by a marketing action (i.e. advertising, printing, and website design).

Implementation of the plan is critical. Without it, there is no reason to have a marketing plan. Think of this part of your plan as a calendar of what everyone in your organization will do each month to roll out your marketing strategy. Your implementation calendar should include the date, action, cost and most importantly, the person responsible for the tactic. Keep your descriptions concise and clear. Make sure the costs are aligned with your budget. Post it. Follow it.

Measure your success
How do you know if your tactics are working? An important step is to decide how you will capture results. Does the person who answers the phone always ask, "How did you hear about us?" Is there a protocol for recording the response? Perhaps your company tracks all calls through your computer system. Do you follow a customer's experience through the company? Did they become a customer? Were they pleased with the end result? Did sales increase, stay the same or decrease because of a tactic? Review this information monthly with your staff who is responsible for plan implementation. Did you execute what was planned? If not, why not? Who was responsible for the tactic? Get feedback from everyone in the organization and document it.

Now call those customers, the ones who gave you feedback before you wrote your marketing plan. Ask them what they think about your marketing tactic. Their perception—not yours—is what drives the success of your business. Document their responses, adjust your tactics as needed and include this in your decision-making process for next year's plan.

Remember, we learn more from our failures than our successes, and your marketing plan is just one way to track both and get closer to hitting the bull's-eye.

Debora Babin Katz is a marketing consultant and freelance writer. Her company, d.communications, assists companies in business development and effective sales and marketing. You can reach Debora at deb@dbkatz.com or visit www.doingbusinesswrite.com.

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