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A successful business plan is a document that includes new prospects and describes the company's potential. It represents a set of specific projects, for example, development and promotion of a new product or acquisition of a new equipment.
A business plan should help the company through its structure, particularization and realism.
For achieving these requirements, a business plan has to:
- take into account the short and long term plans of the company
- analyze if these goals can be attained
- fit the plans with the global objectives and strategy
A marketing plan can focus on a service, a product, a brand or a company and is defined as a list of processes and actions to be taken in order to achieve marketing objectives. The marketing plan is basically a chart of the marketing strategy.
Even nonprofits, in order to accomplish their objectives should develop a marketing plan.
The process of planning
A marketing plan describes the product or the service that is to be promoted. If the plan is intended for external use, it will usually comprise a list of the people involved in the company, the necessary resources , how will these resources be used, and the most important, how will the operations generate revenue.
There are four stages in the elaboration of a marketing plan:
- Collecting the information
- Developing the scheme
- Realization of the actual plan
- Distribution of responsibilities
While collecting the data, very important is that the information is real, correct and objective.
The essential data for a marketing plan includes:
- Market statistics concerning the market size, trends , participants. Very important are also the factors that influence it , both positive and negative
- Competition, as much information abut them as possible, including their sales, profits, marketing techniques, recent trends and sales.
- Information about the costs of the resources involved
- Potential clients
- Legislation and regulations
Following, there are the main topics to be covered by a complete and useful marketing plan:
- Description of the nonprofit and its mission and vision
- Specific, SMART goals to be achieved and measures to be taken in order to achieve them
- Positioning on the market, target market identification
- Environment analysis both internal and external
- Strategic and tactic approach of your goals
- Activities, people and resources to be involved. Set deadlines and evaluation standards.
- Action program detailed
- Marketing budget
- Forecast
- Evaluation
The main issues to be developed in a marketing plan include:
The market. It has to be defined in size, trend, structure and very well understood. The focus should be on the motivation for the acquisition decision, the market segmentation, the positioning, the defense strategy.
The product. It should be described in detail as well as the production process. At this point, the marketing strategy describes the channels and distribution methods, promotion techniques and post-sale services.
The resources. All the resources involved should be approached and calculated as realistic as possible and a budget should be developed.
Finally, all the elements are put together in a marketing plan that is well organized, detailed and clear.
For various target public, elaborating more versions of a marketing plan is required.