There are always a number of critical success factors that you need to take into account when developing a business marketing plan.
First, you need to assess what your desired outcome is. What’s your business objective, what are the milestones on which you’ll determine whether the marketing’s been effective, or not effective? If you clearly define, up front, what you would like marketing to do for you, you are better positioned to manage the business marketing planning implementation and therefore are more likely to stay on track.
Second, you need to take a good look at the macro environment within which you trade. Is there anything happening that could affect your ability to maintain sales or pick up additional sales? For example is there a strong chance that a change in legislation could significantly impact your ability to run your business effectively. How is the current economic crunch going to affect the spending habits of your existing/potential customers? You need to look at all the macro issues to ensure you are not caught unawares with a side on swipe that capsizes your marketing and business needs.
Third, clearly define who you are targeting. What makes a good customer for you? A lot of business marketing plans define “everyone” as their target market, but this clearly cannot be the case, it’s just lazy strategy development. Challenge yourself, and your team. Describe the type of people that have problems you can provide the solution to. What is the problem? Who are the people? Where do they live? What do they read etc? Really focus your brainstorming and drill it down until you get into the minds and hearts of the type of people that are ideal customers for you. Focus in this area will ensure the rest of your marketing plan will be based on a solid foundation. Lack of focus in defining your primary target market will mean a business marketing plan that is wishy-washy, unstructured and ineffective.
Last but not least, decide what you want to tell those people about you, your products or your services that will make them sit up and take note. For example what are the benefits of people using your products/services in order to solve their problem? What makes you an essential product/service?
People only buy products and services because they have a need (real or perceived) that needs satisfying. The job of your business marketing plan is to determine what that need is and then work with your team to deliver the solutions to those needs profitably!
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Tags: business marketing plan, business objective, challenge, critical sucess factors, essentail service, good customer, ideal customers, implementation, macro enviroment, milestones, primary market, products, services, solutions, strategy development
