Hello Everyone,
My main focus will be on how to develop a well-structured Marketing Plan. If you guys got any questions at the end of this analysis feel free to comment, and I will try to provide the best answers to your doubts.
The first thing you need to do when beginning a Marketing Plan is to analyze the current situation of your company. That being said, you start off with:
The Current Situation Diagnosis or the Internal Analysis
The Company:
In this topic you should do a brief explanation of what does the business consist off and in what market area it operates. Where is it located? What does it offer to the customer?
Differentiation:
This is where you will have to explain to a potential shareholder or even to a potential customer, on why is it that your company is different than the many other’s that operate in the same area of business.
Objectives:
Nothing stands out the most, than having well defined goals and actually fighting hard in order to achieve them. This is where you should explain what the objectives of your company are.
For instance: To improve continuously in order to always deserve the preference of the users, making us a reference in quality.
Values:
You should always explain what the values of the company are and by drag of your team or employees, so that the customer feels in some way related to those purposes and values of the company.
For instance: Honesty, rigor and competence, continuous innovation of services…
Mission:
A mission statement describes the organization’s basic function in society, in terms of products and services it produces for its customers.
For instance: Our mission covers the improvement of the users, taking into account the harmony between the physical, psychic and social interaction.
This example is from a physiotherapy clinic I recently worked with.
Team/Employees:
This point is only valuable to refer if you are working with a startup company or a small business. If that’s the case, you should mention the name and personal qualifications of each team member/employee.
Right after this point, comes a very important part of the Internal Analysis, the Marketing Mix, or the 4 P’s of Marketing- Product, Price, Promotion and Placement.
You can often put together the Product and Price in a single explanation.
Product/Price:
This is the time to mention the name of products your company offers and their respective prices.
You need to conclude this analysis with the average price of the products your company offers, that being applied if your company deals with more than 1 product.
Distribution:
The distribution is how you are going to make your product go from where it is at the start of his life, to where the customer needs it to be. You can have 3 different types of channels:
Direct Channel: You are selling your product directly in your own store
Indirect channels: Using distributors or intermediaries.
For instance: If your company produces cheese, and you don’t have your own store where the product can be sold directly to the customer, you are going to need to resort to a supermarket, so that your cheese can go from where it is produced to the final costumer where it can be sold.
Promotion:
What kind of platforms are you using to promote your business? Nowadays online platforms are without a doubt the quickest way to reach a potential customer. Be sure to use that strategy to your advantage. Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and the Company’s own Website are a main preference when it gets down to attracting future customers.
Now that the Internal Situation is analyzed let’s proceed into analyzing the External Environment.
External Environment
Market Analysis- Health Area:
Example: In Portugal we have two types of health system’s, the public and the private. Their biggest difference is the cost of service, the private system is way more expensive while on the other end, the public system is way slower.
Imagine that your company is a private physiotherapy clinic. Be sure to analyze and compare the amount of treatments or queries that have been done in the last 3 years on both systems. Be sure to analyze the amount of queries made both on the private system and the public system, comparing the data to know which system gets more flow of people.
Competition:
Here comes the best part, analyzing your competitors, or the so called “people you are boxing against”. Don’t get me wrong, competition is very good for your company and the market, because sometimes when you see a rival stepping up and coming out with a new product, you have to step up your game, and create one 2x better.
Be sure to analyze their online platforms, their current internal situation and always be on the lookout for different kinds of products or changes in prices.
Consumer Analysis:
This is one of the most important parts of the Marketing Plan, the consumer, this is where you try to comprehend their current needs and possibly their future ones too.
At this stage you should assay the age range of the product/service you are offering and try to understand why people in that age range need them. And why is it that other age ranges don’t?
PEST Analysis
The PEST analysis consists of analyzing the Political Dimensions, Economic, Social and the Technological ones.
This is the part where the big picture comes into play. This is the part where you analyze your country’s situation.
Political Dimension:
You need to gather what kind of efforts your government is doing in the area of business you are working in, and the type of laws that are involved in it, constitutional why’s.
Economic Dimension:
Be sure to look out for this big dimension. This is when you study deeply into the economic stage of your country.
Indicators such as the Gross Domestic Product, the Unemployment Rate, Private Consumption and many others should be analyzed for a full understanding of your country’s current position.
Social Dimension:
Example: Imagine you are trying to build a gym in the United States and you know that the obesity percentage in males is 35% and females 40%.
When in the making of and Executive Summary, where you are presenting to possible investors in your gym, your new concept, it is a very smart idea to mention the Social Dimension in this particular case, due to the fact that your target audience reaches 40% of the female population in the U.S and other 35% male population in the U.S, meaning that you are targeting a vast group of people.
Technological Dimension:
Let’s continue with the gym mindset for now. Imagine that you already have your gym fully equipped with great and advance technologically why’s machines, but then, a company that manufactures gym equipment decides to launch a new product that revolutionizes the treadmill area (example).
That is a Technological Advance, and those are the advances you should always be on the lookout for. By being technologically advance you are improving your service exponentially.
SWOT:
A SWOT Analysis is a process that identifies an organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Internal:
Strengths- When you look inside your company, what are the things that make it stand out? What are your most valuable attributes?
Weaknesses- Recognizing your company’s weaknesses is not a bad thing, it is only a step forward to achieving greatness and improvement.
External:
Opportunities- What kind of opportunities are out there for your business? Is it the economic growth of the country? The decreasing prices of machines that you need? The decreasing prince of manufacturing?
Threats- What kind of events can bring your sells down? Is the competition too strong? Are they holding a huge cut of the market? Are your earnings enough to face dispenses?
So here it is, I hope this information will be useful for some of you guys, if that’s your case, you already made my day.
I will be posting a second part of the Marketing Plan, this time a Business Proposal.
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