4.Marketing plan - sample plan

You are currently promoting your products. Why do you promote them in the way you do?
Why do you attend that exhibition?
Why do you continue to reprint that leaflet?

If you can satisfactorally answer questions like these, then that's great. My experience however is that all too often the answer is

"because we've always done it"
or
"because our competitors do it".

These are not good reasons, and they invariably come about because the above planning process has not been gone through. The "classic" approach to developing a marketing plan would involve the above process. Those of you who are not used to a " market led" approach to business might be inclined to think that this approach is too theoretical and not of the real world. Let me attempt to quash that view immediately.

The most successful, efficient and profitable companies are those that have a very clear vision of what they are trying to achieve and how they will achieve it. If these goals (objectives) are successfully communicated within the organisation then everyone is pulling in the same direction and all resources have the same end in mind. Profitable business growth is then just a matter of time.

Lets take a look at a simple hypothetical example for a car-manufacturing plant in the Midlands

Whether the above is a viable projet or not is not the point. What I am trying to demonstrate here is that the individual tactics (advertising, press releases, leaflets, sponsorship, etc) should be determined by the marketing objectives/strategies.

Just because you have always attended the Birmingham car show for the last 25 years it is clearly now not a sensible use of your limited resources given that it is primarily attended by members of the traditional distribution system.

Your current management team (especially your sales team) might argue very strongly for a continuation of attendance at the show. Also, given that you are attempting to do something different it is quite likely that your management team have little experience of the marketing tactics (armoury) available to support such a (new) strategy.