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Marketing Plan Basics

Marketing plans are crucial for any business, but especially so for a few poignant reasons: Marketing plans help you, the small business owner, not only understand your target market better but they help you get a better grasp about your own business, your weaknesses and strengths compared to your direct and indirect competitors, as well as figure out the tactical aspects of how you are going to reach your target audience. While I won’t go into any real depth here in terms of what should be in each section of your small business marketing plan, I’ll lay out the basic elements of the plan. Remember, you are free to add or subtract any of the marketing plan elements—it’s your plan! If you have any questions, feel free to post them on the blog. We’ll answer your questions as soon as we can. Thanks, and stop on by any time for marketing tips, tricks, tactics, strategy, and general marketing information.

Marketing Plan Outline

I. Executive Summary

II. Brief description of product or service to be marketed, with challenges

Situation Analysis

a. Company

b. Customer

c. Competitor

d. Collaborators

e. Climate

f. SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)

IV. Market Segmentation (meaning your audience—who are they, how old, etc.)

V. Alternative Marketing Strategies

VI. Marketing Mix

a. Product

b. Price

c. Place (Distribution)

d. Promotion

VII. Short & Long-Term Projections

VIII. Conclusion

IX. Appendix

The above can serve as your general Marketing Plan outline, but obviously there’s plenty that needs to go into each section of the plan. Check back for more marketing plan tips.

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