Position Your Brand in the Market
Marketing Strategy Planning puts your company’s path to growth in clear focus and helps you plan the best bang for your buck when you introduce your new brand, product, or service into the market.
The best time to make a Marketing Strategy Plan is while you are thinking about starting a business or designing a product. This is because a strategy plan helps to identify competitors, potential customers, compare retail pricing, compelling product features, and more.
The second best time to make a Marketing Strategy Plan is NOW!
A Strategic Marketing Plan gives you measurements to plan goals against, defines selling seasons in marketing calendars and helps you identify where your messaging just isn’t adding up.
Marketing plans give your communications focus and measurable feedback. Maybe your sales weren’t what you expected but your research is spot on. Perhaps you need to better differentiate your products from competitors or build more brand awareness in a specific target industry.
Define Your Products: Focus on Features
The first step of a marketing plan is to define your products’ and services’ features. The most successful businesses aren’t founded on brand new ideas – they are founded on improvements to an existing idea or product. The challenge for your business then is making sure your customers know how your product is different and better than competitors! Ongoing Product Marketing research keeps these features fresh as you grow.
Define Your Audience: Focus on Benefits
The second step of a marketing plan is to define your potential customers. “Everyone” is not your target market! In a Marketing Strategy Plan we’ll define each potential target audience, characterize what fuels their buying decisions, and create messaging that defines the benefits of your products that speaks to that audience.
Example of Features & Benefits on Separate Target Audiences
The product in question is a 100 oz. Plastic Travel Drink Jug.
| Features | |||
| Audience | Made of Plastic | 100 oz. | Sip or Pour Lid |
| Construction Worker | Durable – won’t break | One fill lasts all day long | Fits a straw |
| Mother | Can be easily cleaned | One fill for the whole family | Pours easily into cups |
| Benefits | |||
Define Your Message: The Language of Your Brand
The last piece of the puzzle is creating a marketing calendar that speaks to your target audience about the features and benefits that you’ve identified as being important to them.
By the end of the planning phase, you’ll know what your challenges are in your chosen market, you’ll be able to formulate a budget for campaigns that drive your highest-margin products/services, and you’ll be able to communicate your strategy to your partners and employees.
Tell Me Your Story.
Let me know what project you’re starting or looking to finish.
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