• What target markets are your best prospects to achieve your goals?
• How will you price your offerings to achieve your goals?
Strategies should be also broad enough to capture several specific tactics, says Roberts, such as "Build Brand Awareness" or "Deliver Unmatched Customer Service."
"Ultimately, all work done on the business should fall into these strategies,' Roberts says. "If the work doesn't satisfy the strategies, then it shouldn't be done."
Dig Deeper: More Marketing Strategies from Inc.com
Writing a Marketing Plan: Outline your Tactics
Tactics are the what in your plan, says Albritton. Start by thinking about what you should do first to achieve the best results. That may be as simple as putting together a very good presentation. Start small and build tactics one-by-one. For each tactic you develop, note how it fits your areas of focus, your strategies, and your objectives.
An example of a tactic could be, according to Roberts, to reduce days from order to delivery as a way to accomplish a strategy of "delivering unmatched customer service."
You should also develop a forecast, for each tactic: Identify the expected volume of sales to flow from each marketing effort, the cost of goods sold attached to that sales volume, the budget, and any other financial figure that you expect to achieve as a result of accomplishing your plan.
Dig Deeper: Developing a Forecast
Writing a Marketing Plan: Build in Measurement for Each Tactic
In solid plans, tactics are thorough, all the way down to details concerning execution and measurements of success, such as launch dates and expected reach, Roberts says. The point is that you need to begin measuring whether the tactics are successful at delivering your objectives. You may even choose to stagger your tactics so that you can evaluate their effectiveness and learn which ones work best for your business.
Units of measurement can range from web traffic to retail foot traffic to increases in sales volume, Albritton says. Basically, you should strive to measure anything you can track to judge whether a tactic has made a difference.
Dig Deeper: Valuing your Prospects
Writing a Marketing Plan: Develop the Plan and Stick to It
Your plan is only as good as its implementation, so also create a plan for precisely how you are going to execute on it, Albritton advises. Where appropriate, look to partner with other organizations to help with implementation. You may be able to find interns from nearby universities, for example. "These days, even high school students have amazing talents in technology and design," she says.
If your plan includes advertising or events, sometimes the vendors will help with implementation. Depending on your area of business, you may also consider bartering services with other businesses. If you don't currently have the resources available to take action, find someone who does.
Dig Deeper: Setting Realistic Projections
Writing a Marketing Plan: Implement the Plan – and Stay Flexible
Never forget that the opportunities and risks you established in your S.W.O.T. analysis might dictate that the objectives you've established in your plan might not happen "as planned," Roberts says. A whole host of variables could come into play that you never considered in the beginning, such as changes in consumer demand, channel expansion, customer contracts, competitive responses, and supply costs.
That's why the best advice is to rough out a plan and then put it down in detail with action items on a monthly calendar, Albritton says. Set a time to review the calendar each month, assess results and determine next steps.
Dig Deeper: Discipline vs. Flexibility and Creativity
Writing a Marketing Plan: Additional Resources
American Marketing Association
A source that some 30,000 marketers turn to every day for information/resources, education/training and professional networking.
2010 Marketing Plan + Calendar
If you're looking for something to give you a daily to-do list in constructing your marketing plan, look no further.
Also, check out the related blog here.
Off-The-Wall Marketing Ideas: Jump-Start Your Sales Without Busting Your Budget
By Nancy Michaels. Adams Media, 1999.
A guide to incorporating creative ideas for selling products and services into a marketing plan.
The Little Blue Book of Marketing: Build a Killer Plan in Less Than a Day
By Paul Kurnit and Steve Lance. Portfolio, 2009.
An easy-to-follow advice guide that encourages collaboration between any company's key players in marketing, research and development, sales, financial, legal, and senior management in constructing a marketing plan.
Streetwise Marketing Plan
By Don Debelak. Adams Media, 2000.
A straightforward guide to putting your marketing plan together quickly and cheaply.
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