Marketing strategies are an essential part of starting a business, but most entrepreneurs do not write them. A marketing plan or strategy is as essential as a business plan. The difference is that a marketing plan focuses on maintaining the existing customer and acquiring new ones. It is strategic; it has objectives, facts, and numbers.

When creating a marketing plan for your business, you need to make sure that it has all the necessary tactics and tools that will achieve your sales goals. The plan contains what you will sell, who you want to buy it from, and how you will generate leads that will lead to sales.

A marketing plan does not need to be beautifully written unless you are requesting for funding. As Bill Bronchick advocates, you need to write it in bullet points and straight to the point.

If you desire to write a marketing plan, the points below are going to help you create a great marketing strategy. Make sure it contains who your customers are, how they will access your information, and how you are going to reach them.

Tips on creating the perfect marketing strategy for your business

Situation analysis

In the first section, explain what your business is, the products or services it provides and how the benefits you are providing are different from your competitors.

You need to know in detail what your competitors are offering, what your services and products are, and how your products offer better value compared to your competitors.

The situation analysis should contain an overview of your company’s SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). Strengths and weaknesses are the characteristics within your business, and the opportunities and threats are factors that are outside your business.

Make sure you determine how your company’s strengths and products are superior to your competitors or not.

List marketing goals

At this stage, list down what you would like your marketing plan to achieve. Write short list goals, and make sure they are measurable. This way you will know when you have achieved them.

Set up the marketing budget

Just so you know, you will have to know the percentage of your projected gross sales to your annual marketing budget. This may translate to using the new funding you have acquired, or borrowing finances.

As there are various tactics you can use to reach out to all your target market, each tactic you use will have to fit a tight budget.

Once you gather costs for your marketing tactics, you will quickly realize that know that you have exceeded your budget. If it happens, adjust your tactics to fit an affordable budget.

Never stop marketing, all you have to keep in mind is making sure that you are not concentrating on costly tactics until you can afford them.

Develop marketing communications tactics

This is the sole reason why you are writing a marketing strategy. Here, you are detailing the tactics you will use to get your prospects and accomplish your goals.

When creating a marketing strategy, make sure it covers all the stages of the sales cycle. For cold prospects, think of direct marketing, public relations, and advertising.

Warm prospects- for those who know your marketing message and know you personally- respond to them via email, customer appreciation events, and loyalty programs. These are the best prospects because they are ready to close a sale, through phones or email, as well as marketing adds.

To complete it, outline the marketing strategies and a variety of tactics that will help you attain your prospects at any point in your sales cycles. An example is combining print advertising, and local searches to reach cold prospects while you use email for warm prospects.

Try and figure out which media platform your target uses to get information on the kind of product you provide. Avoid broad-based media which will have content that is irrelevant.

Make sure you are going to use marketing tactics that will reach your audience when they are most receptive to your message.

Target audience

Develop an easy, one-sided paragraph of who your prospective customers are. This can be described by sex, age, earnings, geographic location, family composition, or lifestyle.

You can ask yourself: are your customers conservative or innovative? Leaders or followers? Traditional or modern? How are they going to purchase what you are offering?

If you are a business-to-business marketer like Bill Bronchick, defining your target audience may be through their type of business, size of business, or job title. In this section, make sure you define who your target audience is as it will guide you on how you will plan your media campaigns.

In conclusion

Make sure you know who you are going to target, what your budget is, and how you are going to get your customers.