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Marketing Plan: What It Is and How to Create One

Victor Ifegwu Mbonu
Marketing Plan

Foundr

  Marketing is more than just advertising your product or service; it’s about creating a strategy that helps you reach your target audience, engage them, and convert them into loyal customers. As an entrepreneur, having a structured marketing approach is crucial if you must succeed in the market. A well-crafted marketing plan can provide direction, set clear objectives, and allocate resources efficiently. Notable entrepreneur Peter Drucker once said, “Marketing aims to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” This quote succinctly captures the essence of marketing – understanding your customers and providing solutions that meet their needs. This article will walk you through a marketing plan, why it is crucial, and how to create one tailored to your business needs.
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What Is Marketing and Why Is It Important?

Marketing is simply the process of promoting and selling products or services. It’s about understanding your audience’s needs and strategically positioning your offerings to meet those needs. The role of marketing in any business, big or small, can never be overemphasized. It helps you connect with customers, build brand awareness, and drive sales. Effective marketing can lead to increased brand recognition and customer loyalty for businesses in a dynamic market like Nigeria.

What is a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan is a comprehensive document that outlines a company’s marketing strategy, including its goals, target audience, budget, and specific tactics to be used over a set period (typically a year). It serves as a roadmap that guides the business’s marketing efforts, ensuring all activities are aligned with the company’s objectives. Having a marketing plan is vital for several reasons:
  1. It provides a clear direction and focus, helping you allocate resources efficiently and avoid wasted efforts.
  2. It helps to identify and understand your target audience, ensuring marketing efforts are directed towards those most likely to purchase.
  3. It helps in building and maintaining brand awareness. People are likely to consider your products when they know about your brand.
  4. It sets measurable marketing objectives, allowing you to track progress and make data-driven decisions.
  5. It helps you stay adaptable, allowing adjustments based on market feedback and performance metrics.
  6. A strong marketing strategy can give you an edge over competitors by highlighting your unique value proposition.
As Bill Gates said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” A marketing plan helps you stay connected with your audience, learn from their feedback, and continuously improve your offerings.

Steps to Create an Effective Marketing Plan

Creating a marketing plan might be tasking, but it’s a structured process that, when followed diligently, can yield excellent results. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you create an effective marketing plan for your business.

1. Conduct Market Research

Creating an effective marketing plan starts with having an understanding of your market. Research your industry, market trends, and competitors. This clarifies the state of your business and identifies opportunities and threats. Also, gather data on your target audience’s demographics, preferences, and behaviours.

2. Define Your Target Audience

When you have conducted your market research and have data on your target audience, divide your market into segments based on factors like age, location, income, and buying behaviour. For example, Professionals in Nigeria who live in cities and rural farmers might have very different needs and preferences. So, it is wise to segment these audiences. You can create detailed personas representing your ideal customers.

3. Set Marketing Goals

Clearly define what you want to achieve through your market. This is important as it will help define what strategies to adopt. Your goals could be to increase website traffic by 20% or to increase following and engagement on your social media channels by 72%. Now, as you probably are already aware, when setting goals, you need to ensure they qualify as SMART goals – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

4. Develop Your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)

This is part of what your market research will help you arrive at. So, you need to determine and define what makes your product or service unique and why customers should choose you over competitors. This is important as you ensure your marketing messages convey your UVP.

5. Define Your Marketing Strategies

Your marketing strategies outline how you plan to achieve your goals within the period you’ve set out. The strategies here might include the use of digital channels or traditional channels.
  1. Social Media Marketing: Using social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to engage with your audience.
  2. Content Marketing: Creating valuable content that resonates with your audience. Seth Godin said, “Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make, but about the stories you tell.” For instance, if you are a Nigerian food business, your content marketing could be focused on sharing recipes, cooking tips, and behind-the-scenes of how you prepare your meals.
  3. Email Marketing: Building an email list and sending newsletters to keep customers informed and engaged.
The use of traditional channels will depend on your target audience. Targeting certain demographics in Nigeria will still require traditional channels like radio, print media, and events to be effective in marketing.
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Whatever channel you are working on. Develop a content plan to work with. This will include blogs, videos, infographics, and other types of content that resonate with your audience.

6. Budget Allocation

Successful marketing efforts need a significant amount of money. Determine how much you are willing to spend on your marketing efforts. Allocate your budget across different channels and tactics based on their expected ROI. For example, as a Nigerian business, you might allocate more funds to online ads during festive seasons like Christmas, Eid or Black Friday.

7. Implementation Timeline

Develop a detailed timeline for executing your marketing activities. This helps in executing your marketing strategies, keeping track of progress, ensuring timely execution, and ensuring all team members are aligned with the plan. You can use project management and Team management tools to keep track of tasks and deadlines.

8. Monitoring and Evaluation

As you execute your marketing strategies, you will need to pay attention to the analytics on how your efforts are delivering on your marketing goals. So, define how you will monitor and evaluate your results. Use analytics tools. There are analytics tools designed to help you monitor the performance of your marketing activities and keep track of your key performance indicators (KPIs) such as website traffic, conversion rates, and social media engagement. Most of the social media platforms have in-built analytics tools in place.

Bonus Tip:

In the words of marketing guru Philip Kotler, “Marketing takes a day to learn. Unfortunately, it takes a lifetime to master.” Continuous improvement is key to effective marketing. As you implement what you have in your marketing plan, be prepared to adjust your strategy based on what the data from your efforts tells you. This might involve tweaking your strategies, reallocating your budget, or setting new goals. Register to attend the CN Business Mixer

Conclusion

Creating a marketing plan is crucial for any business aiming to succeed in today’s competitive environment. However, it is not just a one-time task but an ongoing process that requires constant review and adjustment. A well-thought-out marketing plan can provide the structure and direction needed to deal with challenges as they arise and seize opportunities. So, work today to create your marketing plan, and let your marketing plan be the foundation for your business’s success.
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