Components of Marketing Plan

The 10 Elements of a
Good Marketing Plan

A good Marketing Plan includes these 10 elements:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Describe Your Business

Conduct a Situation Analysis
Define Your Customer
Strategize Your Market Entry
Forecast your Sales or Demand Measurement
Define Your Marketing Budget
Integrate Your Marketing Communication
Identify Sales Channels
Track Marketing Activities
Evaluate Your Progress
Developing a Marketing Plan
1. Describe Your
Business
Small business owners often describe themselves by their
product or services; however, business must be viewed as a
customer-satisfying process, not goods-producing.
Describe your business in detail and clearly identify goals
and objectives.
Answer the following questions:
What is your product or service?

How will your product benefit the customer?
What is different about the product your business is offering?
Is it a new business, a takeover, or an expansion?
Why will your business be profitable?
What are the growth opportunities?
What is your geographic marketing area?
2. Setting objectives
Training Title
August 2010
3. Conduct a Situation
Analysis
Strengths
Weaknes
ses
Opportuni
ties
Threats
This section of the plan could include a

SWOT analysis to summarize your
Strengths,
Weaknesses, Opportunities
Strengths: assets or a resources that can be used to improve your
and
Threats.
Geschäft
competitive position.
Weaknesses: resources or capabilities that may cause your
business to have a less competitive position.
Opportunities: situations or conditions arising from a business
strengths, or set of positive externalities.
Threats: problems that focus on your weaknesses and which can
Developing asituation.
Marketing Plan
create a potentially negative
4. Define Your
Customers
Defining your market does not need to be a difficult process. You do not
need a huge market base, but you need to be realistic and your market
needs to be well-defined.
Who are your competitors, and who do they target?
Who is your perfect customer and client base?
What is your current customer base (in terms of age, sex, income, and
geographic location)?
What habits do your customers and potential customers share? Where do
they shop, what do they read, watch, listen to?
What prospective customers are you currently not reaching? How can you
reach them?
What qualities do your customers value most about your product or
service? Do they value selection, convenience, service, reliability,
availability, or affordability?
What qualities about your product or service do you need to improve?
How can they be adjusted to serve your customers better?
5. Strategize Your
Market Entry
Once you have identified what is unique about
your business and who your target buyers are,
focus on your competition:
Identify your direct competitors and learn what they
do.
Sharpen your decisions about the best business
category and market segment in which to compete.
Training Title
6. Define Your
Marketing Budget
Marketing budgets, especially in small and mid-sized
businesses, are often arbitrarily set as either x% of planned
revenue or y% over the prior year's marketing budget.
7. Identify Sales
Channels
Part of the challenge of marketing is figuring out which distribution
method to use for your business.
Include all relevant distribution channels:
Retail: Stores selling to final consumer buyers (one store, or a chain of
stores).
Wholesale: An intermediary distribution channel that usually sells to
retail stores.
Direct mail: Generally catalog merchants that sell directly to consumers.
Telemarketing: Merchants selling directly to consumer buyers at retail
via phones.
Cyber-Marketing: Merchants selling directly to consumer buyers at retail
prices, or business-to-business products and services at wholesale prices
via computer networks.
Sales force: Salaried employees of a company or independent
commissioned representatives who usually sell products for more than one
company.
8. Evaluation
Identify how you will measure your success and in what
ways your objectives have been met. Then, use these
metrics to determine the success of your marketing efforts.
Answer the following questions:
Did we reach our goals?

Was the marketing campaign successful?
Were we able to determine Return on Investment (ROI)?
Did our efforts result in conversion? In other words, were we
able to convert an inquirer to a visitor, a visitor to a customer?
Can we utilize our database to survey, capture additional
information, or establish a more comprehensive customer
relationship program?
10

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The 10 Elements of a

Good Marketing Plan

Describe Your Business

Developing a Marketing Plan

What is your product or service?

Developing a Marketing Plan

This section of the plan could include a

Developing a Marketing Plan

Developing a Marketing Plan

Did we reach our goals?

Developing a Marketing Plan

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