The 5 Components of Your Marketing Plan

As you toil away at the details of your marketing plan—reviewing advertising options, timelines for ad campaigns, and strategic online marketing opportunities—it can be challenging to put it all together into a cohesive plan. A marketing plan can really help guide you through the budgeting and strategic-thinking process. Instead of throwing all sorts of ideas on the table, a plan can help you navigate through each step with much more flexibility. Does your marketing plan include these five components?

1. Marketing mission statement. This is different from the mission statement on your business plan, focusing on exactly where your market segment is, and where your products or services fit here. An example marketing mission statement might be, ‘our lifestyle products are designed for 18-24 year old college students to improve learning rates.’ This will help you narrow down exactly what you’re bringing to market, for whom, and most importantly, why.
2. Situation analysis. This can be drawn out using a SWOT analysis method. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; addressing all of these areas makes it much easier to see where you stand amongst the competition, and which new territory you could potentially call your own. The situation analysis can also include a market forecast or segmentation.
3. Expense budget requirements. The marketing budget is often overlooked during the startup phase, but it’s an important factor to consider as you start launching campaigns and programs. You may need to pull together potential proposals for a realistic idea of what your marketing projects will cost. Setting a budget will help you filter out items that can wait for a later time, and just help you prioritize your marketing plan so it works as you grow.
4. Sales forecasting. Put together a spread sheet that outlines what you expect each month, and plot an ‘actual’ column as you move ahead. Knowing how closely your forecast matches actual results is a critical part of growth, and can help you change and shift your strategy as needed.
5. Risk and contingency report. This can quickly become complicated without the right approach, but it’s well worth the effort to put something down in writing. A risk and contingency report helps you highlight your minimum and maximum investments (based on your budget) for each marketing strategy; it can help you calculate your return on investment, and identify which ones are the most risky.

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