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Writing a Marketing Plan
Marketing Plan Components
Writing a marketing plan is simply writing a plan for marketing your
business. At its most essential, your marketing plan should include the
following components:
- A statement of what you intend to accomplish, expressed in measurable
terms (number of clients, gross or net income, fees, etc.).
- A statement of your niche
market.
- Description of your offer: how are you different from others in your
niche market?
- An analysis of your marketing resources: the time, money, networks,
talents, and other means that you have available for promoting your
business.
- A plan for focusing those resources to create the results you want.
The Rule of Threes is an effective business
marketing tool to create such a plan.
How do you know that you have written a good marketing plan?
According to Jay Conrad Levinson, a marketing plan should have the following
ten traits. (I’ve liberally adapted them to align with the principles
of Authentic Promotion. )
- A good marketing plan summarizes and supports your commitment to your
business, yourself, and your clients as expressed in a marketing program.
- It treats marketing as an investment. It will show how much you will
invest, in what, for how long, and with what expected return. It’s
a tool for being a good steward.
- It outlines the offers you will make and ways of making them that
are consistent. It will specify conditions of satisfaction.
- It will tell how you will make your prospects confident in your business.
That is, it will state how you will build trust and sincerity into your
offers and promises.
- It keeps you on track as you patiently sustain your commitment. (Patience
is a skill, not a virtue.)
- It includes assorted means of showing up. Start with three ways to
show up. Repeat these until they prove successful, in which case you
will continue to do them, or until they prove ineffective, in which
case you will replace them with other methods. Add new methods as your
resources (and resourcefulness) allow.
- It recognizes that profits come subsequent to a successful relationship
and sale. Therefore, it includes a commitment to following up after
a relationship is started and making compelling offers for future revenues.
- It shows how you will manage your business so that it is convenient
for your clients. It will state how you will be accessible to your ideal
clients.
- A good marketing plan will have an element of amazement and delight.
- A good marketing plan will specify how you will measure the results
of each of your ways of showing up.
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© Molly Gordon, 2006. If you'd like to republish the above article,
please read our simple reprint terms.
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Develop Your Small Business
Marketing Plan - Index
Writing a marketing plan || 20
helpful questions for creating a marketing plan outline
A list of small
business marketing strategies for developing your marketing plan
Gratitude as a component of a marketing
plan || Your
Marketing Plan Evaluation
Marketing Plan Resources
|| Reprint Terms for Marketing
Plan Articles
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Learn more about Authentic Promotion - a comprehensive
small business marketing resource that turns marketing and promotion into
a path of increasing self-awareness, authenticity, and right livelihood.
In particular, the principles you apply and the tools you learn build
the solid foundation for writing a marketing plan that works.
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Contact an acknowledged expert
on small business marketing Molly Gordon at:
Shaboom Inc. Life could be a dream…
PO Box 195
Suquamish, WA 98392-0195
mgordon@authenticpromotion.com
As a business coach and small
business marketing consultant, Molly Gordon, MCC, is available in Greater
Seattle Area and internationally |
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