The question that entrepreneurs generally ask themselves is whether the marketing plan is effective or not. The answer is not easy to identify: it is not enough to look at the turnover and see how it is moving in the last period.
You need to take into account different aspects and ask yourself certain questions to understand how the company is doing and whether your marketing plan is effective or not.
But what is meant by marketing plan? Marketing plan is a document in which we find a planning of all the activities with the aim of obtaining the maximum profit from what the company offers on the market.
The creation of the marketing plan is a consequence of precise market and competition analyses previously carried out. These analyses are essential to build a successful analysis, even if they are generally not known or are not carried out except when drafting the marketing plan.
The marketing plan therefore indicates the direction that the company must follow in the following year. At the end of the year, various analyses will be carried out on what worked and what did not.
One of the most positive aspects of writing a marketing plan is therefore having a pre-established written strategy that allows you to measure the results of your campaigns.
Does your company have a written marketing plan?
For the economy of the company it is essential to create a written marketing plan . This is because the organization and clarity of something on paper (or on the computer, the substance does not change) is essential to have a clear and winning strategy.
Forget about theoretical marketing plans that remain in the minds of marketers: by doing so you risk forgetting the fundamental stages of a journey that could lead to risks and losses instead of gains and growth.
But what does it mean to build an effective marketing plan? The first step to take into consideration is the definition of objectives : it is essential to mention all the objectives that you want to achieve, whether they are quantifiable or not. By doing so, you will have parameters to always keep in mind.
Depending on the objectives, you must then decide which message you want to convey in this marketing plan: this is important to give clarity to the potential customer about the qualities of our company and our products.
A marketing plan that conveys too many messages risks making the users we are addressing even more confused.
The last step is choosing the budget for the marketing plan : here you need to be careful to also take into account other costs such as any new product launches and promotional campaigns.
In these calculations, all the economic aspects of the company must be taken into account because it is from clear and correct accounts that a path towards growth can begin.
It is important to take into account that the marketing plan must be created in such a way as to allow for changes even after it has been started.
Customers change their preferences over time: knowing the trends you can accurately predict the results that can be achieved. If the marketing plan is modifiable you can adapt it to the context of the moment.
Have you defined a brand positioning to create a difference from your competitors?
Let's start with an example: how many ice cream shops do you know? I suppose many. But why do some of them continue to exist and earn money and others continually lose customers?
There could be many answers: the simplest could be “because the ice cream from the other ice cream shop is better”. But be careful, sometimes the right answers are also the less obvious ones.
Probably the success of that ice cream shop could be due to the brand positioning adopted. For this reason it is essential to define a clear brand positioning that creates a difference towards competitors.
But how do you implement a brand positioning strategy? There are essentially 3 steps to follow. First of all, you need to identify your competitors and analyze their positioning in the market : just think about which brands come to mind that are rivals to your company.
The second step is to find a market niche to fit into . If you have a role in the target market then all you have to do is specialize, analyzing the market and trying to understand if there is a demand that has not yet been satisfied.
The last step is to ask yourself what your added value is, your qualities that differentiate you from other competitors . It is from these points that you can build an effective marketing plan.
Is there a person in the company who has a background in marketing and web marketing?
This question is also fundamental to understand whether your marketing is effective or not.
Of course, the answer may depend on the size of your company: if you have a company that is too small, it is more likely that there is no marketing and web marketing expert within it.
But why is it important to have a person who has the basics of marketing and web marketing? Because the marketing expert is able to implement an effective and developed marketing plan to bring your company to success.
Web marketing skills are essential because the internet has become a fundamental tool for finding new potential customers, giving visibility to your company and spreading your brand.
For these reasons, it is important that a company has professionals who know marketing and web marketing and know how to move in certain contexts.
Have you divided your market into conscious demand and latent demand?
Another important question to answer is the one about conscious demand and latent demand. Often, however, this question does not find an answer because we do not know well what conscious demand and latent demand are.
Latent demand refers to that portion of the market that may need a product or service, but is unaware of its existence or is not actively seeking a solution to a problem or satisfaction of a desire.
The best tactic is to stimulate latent demand and try to transform the vague interest of users into a conscious interest. The perfect place to carry out this strategy is social networks.
As for the conscious question , it is asked by all users who are actively looking for a solution to a problem or want to satisfy a specific desire: they are therefore often aware of the product or service they want to purchase.
As far as conscious demand is concerned, the right places to intercept it are search engines : this is because anyone who needs something starts with a web search, probably from Google.
For these reasons it is important to have carried out a division of your market into conscious demand/latent demand. Not having done so means losing potential customers.
Have you studied your competition by defining a competitor map?
This question ties in with question 2 on brand positioning. Why? Simple: because knowing your competition is the first step to defeating it . Knowing the “enemy” and its weaknesses is one of the most important points of the marketing strategy.
Focusing on those aspects could be the winning strategy to gain you new customers who are dissatisfied with the competition's service, or perhaps simply waiting for a company to offer them a better product and/or service.
Very often this assessment is not performed by companies or is performed superficially, leading to a loss of knowledge about the market situation.
If you want to perform a competitor analysis, you need to take into account several aspects: first of all, you need to understand who the competition really is with respect to your company and try to collect all the information possible with respect to these realities. After having collected the information, you need to process and analyze it, so as to understand what the strengths and weaknesses of the rivals are and therefore understand which strategies are best to adopt.
Have you checked your customer satisfaction in the last 12 months?
As you have analyzed your competition, their market and their customers, it is important to do the same for your company.
If you have not analyzed your customer satisfaction, you are simply using the wrong marketing strategy: this is because there are probably some dissatisfied customers among yours.
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Not knowing what they are is a serious damage for the company while solving these problems could be a very effective move because on the one hand the problem is solved, on the other your customers will understand that you are "always on the ball" and ready to repair any errors.
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