5 Tips for a Successful Marketing Plan

The important aspects of a marketing plan are often overlooked because of busy schedules that press us into last minute decisions concerning the one business process that generates revenue. Everything else on our busy schedules is an expense. So it's easy to pick a priority if we keep marketing in perspective as to the importance it plays in our business.

A Written Marketing Plan
We need to have a well thought out strategic marketing plan. A basic overall understanding as to what marketing ideas we intend to use to sell our product to our target market. Without a plan we will lose our way and our marketing efforts will remain weak and ineffective.

Strategic means an overall idea as to the reasons we should be marketing our products. Tactics are the actual details as to how we carry out the marketing plan. Make sure you know and understand the difference between strategies and tactics.

If we always have our written marketing plan we can stay on track to increase and grow revenue exponentially.

Demographics of the Target Market
Who is our customer? That one questions is so simple, yet we forget who are the basic money paying customers. Those loyal customers who love our products and keep buying all year long. They have some commonality that we can't afford to overlook. Why? Because we need to sell to the right people at the right time and if we don't target our marketing to the right people we will never succeed.

Market Research
If we know our customer and have a plan we can begin our market research to see who is the competition, what are the habits of our customer and what benefits are most desired by these customers. Is our pricing model effective and can we deliver as expected?

We need to understand how our target market best receives marketing messages. Some receive these messages from emails, blogs, snail mail, or a phone call. There are literally lots of ways people access advertising so the need for 3-4 different medias is very desirable.

These are all questions that are answered by market research and you better know them or risk absolute failure in the marketplace.

So make sure you do this step very thoroughly to find marketing ideas that work.

Test Marketing
Don't bet the houseon a guess about the best media to use. Test first then test again. Rather then sending out 10,000 emails send out 500 to see how the target market reacts to your copy. Call some of the customers you converted with a survey as well as some that did not convert. Then tweak the copy to see if you get better results. Once you reach what you consider is your minimum return on investment send out a 1000 emails continuing to test to improve the control ad. This way you are more effective and optimize your marketing budget.

Tracking Results for Each Media
Low returns on your investment can only be one of two things 1) The wrong media or 2) Bad copy. You must discover which to increase your return. But if you don't track your results you don't have a clue as to how to navigate the marketplace.

Tracking perplexes a lot of marketing personnel. There is software available to track results which takes a lot of the guessing out of the game and allows you to accurately ascertain which campaigns are successful and which need more testing.

Accurate tracking is extremely valuable in todays poor economy. It helps to pinpoint results for the least amount of investment. Good tracking software can pay for itself by helping you to find and convert more customers by using the most effective media.

As you begin a marketing campaign remember doing this well leads to success.