Top 10 Components of your Entrepreneurial Marketing Plan and 21 Key Items to Track for Results!
Kristie Tamsevicius
www.WebMomz.com
The key to any success business venture is havinga solid plan. While many entrepreneurs have abusiness plan, they fail to plan their promotionalefforts. A marketing plan will help you to create a cohesive approachthat best helps you to meet your goals. It should include specificobjectives, strategies for realizing each objective, and benchmarks formeasuring your results. Below are the 10 key items to include in yourmarketing plan and 21 ways to track your promotional results!
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - Create a mission statementabout what specific objectives you are trying toachieve with your marketing campaign. Includewhether the scope of the campaign is local, regional,national, or international.
"SWOT" ANALYSIS (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,and threats). This will include information aboutdirectly competitive and indirectly competitivebusinesses in your industry.
TARGET MARKET: Write a clear definition of your target market, marketsegments, and major market trends and influences.
MARKET RESEARCH: This will tell why your product isneeded in the marketplace and what specific ways yourproduct will fill that need. This will include uniqueselling points, competitive advantage, and productbenefits to consumers.
MARKETING OBJECTIVES: Your marketing objectives andgoals will include measurable and deadlines by whichyou wish to achieve them.
MARKETING TACTICS: Which promotional vehicles you willuse to meet the marketing objectives.
DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS: What channels of distribution you will use tobring your product to the marketplace?
ACTION PLAN: Here you will includes budgets, costs, and outlinesresources will be required to implement the marketing tactics. This willinclude financial, monetary, personnel, vendors, systems, resources andpartners you need to realize your marketing plan.
TEST MARKETING: Make a list of any product research ortest marketing you need you will perform.
TRACKING RESULTS: Method of tracking results to determine if yourpromotional efforts are effective.
TRACKING YOUR PROMOTIONAL CAMPAIGNSAnother idea to keep in mind is testing and trackingyour publicity and promotional efforts. Measuring the effectiveness ofvarious ad campaigns will tell you which ads are working, which onesaren't, and will give you an opportunity to adjust your efforts toobtain optimal results.
21 Key items to track in your publicityand promotional efforts:
name of campaign
date the campaign was launched
cost of campaign
newsletters, sales letters, magazines, television, radio stations, or web sites where the advertising, stories, or press releases were sent and run
where news story was published
list of interviews generated
sales inquiries generated
new sales generated
return customers generated
new contacts added to your network
new business partners created
web traffic generated
new newsletter subscribers
overall revenue increase
increased product revenues
market share increase
improvement in search engine rankings
increase in sites linking to yours
number of search engines listed in
new speaking engagements obtained
number of articles published
prospects called
Additionally, surveys can provide real-time feedback onproduct titles, product offerings, price points, preferred method ofcontact, and other key items.
Survey Monkey (
www.surveymonkey.com
) is a free servicethat allows you to create surveys. What better way to findout what your audience needs them to ask them?
Article by Kristie Tamsevicius, America's Favorite Small Business Success Story.This article is an excerpt from Chapter 8 of the new book "
I LOVE MY LIFE: A Mom's Guide to Working from Home
" by Kristie Tamsevicius - (Wyatt MacKenzie Publishing March 2003Available at Amazon.com Join our community of Work at Home parents at
www.WebMomz.com
. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com
