4th assignment:

1. 6 steps of Marketing plan

A marketing plan is a strategic roadmap that businesses use to organize, execute, and track their
marketing strategy over a given period. Marketing plans can include different marketing strategies
for various marketing teams across the company, all working toward the same business goals.

To summarize, the business's marketing plan is dedicated to introducing a new software product to

the marketplace and driving signups to that product. The business will execute that plan with
three marketing strategies: a new industry blog, a YouTube video series, and a Twitter account.

What is a marketing process?

A marketing process is a strategic plan to help a company set and meet its financial goals. Following the
process allows a business to:

 Identify the need it fills in the marketplace

 Set sales, marketing and revenue objectives and goals
 Identify the target market and determine its wants and needs
 Develop products and services to meet those wants and needs
  Implement the marketing tactics
 Monitor and adjust the marketing plan as necessary

6 marketing process steps

The marketing process is a step-by-step guideline for an organization's marketing efforts. Here are the
six steps of the marketing process:

1. Clarify the mission, vision and objectives

The first step of the marketing process is determining the organization's current state and its goals.
Clarifying the mission and vision statements enables a company to identify and analyze its fundamental
purpose and intentions. Then, the management team creates strategic objectives to determine the
desired future direction of the business. They can also identify the goals that allow the company to
achieve those results.

Read more: What Are Strategic Objectives? (With Examples)

2. Develop a positioning strategy

When developing a positioning strategy, a company envisions the impression it wants to make on
customers. Positioning requires a deep awareness and understanding of both the marketplace and
consumers. The company then plans how to create that perception through advertising and marketing
messages.

These are the three common frameworks for creating a positioning strategy:

 SWOT analysis: The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT)

analysis technique analyzes the four elements to assess and adjust company positioning.

 PEST analysis: This analysis identifies overarching or environmental opportunities and threats by

focusing on political, economic, sociocultural and technological (PEST) indicators.

 5C analysis: This process helps the business analyze internal and external positioning by looking
at five factors: the company, customers, competitors, collaborators and climate (environment).

Read more: How To Create a Successful Brand Positioning Strategy

3. Create a marketing plan

A marketing plan is an actionable process that the business can implement, measure, adapt and improve
to reach its customers and meet its objectives. Companies usually use the following foundational
business elements to create a marketing plan:

Brand identity
This refers to the tangible elements that help convey a company's desired image to consumers. Brand
identity elements include a company's vision, mission, values, personality and voice.

Target audience

The target audience is the group of people most likely to buy a company's product or service. A business
can define its target audience using customer evaluation and profiling and competitor analysis, all of
which can help the company make marketing decisions and determine its distribution channels.

Marketing goals

These are the results a company hopes to gain from its marketing efforts, such as increased brand
awareness, improved customer engagement or boosted sales. Marketing goals don't need to be
financial, but it's helpful when they're measurable and trackable.

Budget

The company's strategic tactics depend on the organization's available budget and resources. The
marketing plan's budget section clearly outlines the costs of individual initiatives, and in most
organizations, management approves the budget before implementing the plan.

Read more: How To Write a Marketing Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide (With Examples)

4. Determine which marketing strategies to use

Organizations often use the following marketing strategies, known as the four Ps of marketing, to
identify their ideal marketing activities:

Product strategy

The product is the good or service the company provides to consumers, and it typically fills a need or
gap in the marketplace. For instance, a child care facility may open next to a large corporation, and the
proximity of this center to the corporation may fill a gap for employees who want the opportunity to
visit their children during the workday.

Price strategy

The company provides the product or service at a cost that allows for profit. There are many variables
around price strategy, such as established price points in the marketplace, the effectiveness of
discounts, the cost to provide the offer and the profit margin.

Place strategy

This refers to where consumers find the product, such as in stores or catalogs. It also pertains to factors
like placement in the stores, such as on specific shelves or displays, and the distribution channels
necessary for marketing.
Promotion strategy

A company uses promotion strategies to make consumers aware of the product or service. This usually
includes advertising and other promotional activities, like offering a sale.

Read more: The Marketing Mix: The Art of Using the 4 Ps of Marketing

5. Implement the marketing plan

After devising a marketing plan and establishing strategic marketing tactics, the business can complete
the following actions:

 Determine and obtain the budget, platforms and staff required to fulfill the plan
 Create content types and promotion plans and a timeline for accomplishing these plans
 Set metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) and select tracking tools and methods
 Take the actions stated in the plan

Read more: A Complete Guide to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

6. Evaluate results and realign as necessary

The final step of the marketing process is reviewing and evaluating results. This includes tracking
elements like how many customers engage with an ad or whether the company achieved its desired
KPIs. After analyzing the data and creating detailed reports, the organization can adapt the marketing
plan to maximize future profitability.

========1. Set your marketing goals. Once you’ve decided to market your practice, you need to set
realistic and measurable goals to achieve over the next 18 to 24 months. This time span allows you to
plan activities around community events that are in line with your marketing goals. For example, you
might help sponsor an annual walkathon for breast cancer or speak at your community’s annual health
fair. Because of the rapid changes occurring in the health care environment, we don’t recommend
planning specific activities more than two years in advance. One way to define your goals is to separate
them into the following three categories: immediate, one to six months; short-term, six to 12 months;
and long-term, 12 to 24 months. Here are some examples of measurable goals:

 Increase the number of new patients seen in the practice by 5 percent within the first six
months and 10 percent by the end of the first year.

 Shift your patient mix by expanding the pediatric and adolescent patient base from 15 percent
to 25 percent of total patient visits within 18 months.

 Increase your gross revenue by 30 percent within 24 months.

 Improve your practice’s image, which may be measured by “before” and “after” scores on a
community survey or by reviews from focus group participants.
It’s important to share these goals with your staff members. They can tell you from their perspectives
whether they believe the goals are reasonable. If you want your marketing plan to be successful, your
staff needs to support your efforts to achieve the marketing goals.

KEY POINTS

 Marketing can increase your income, introduce new providers or improve your practice image,
among other things.

 A strategic marketing plan requires you to define your practice in terms of what it does for
patients.

 Every goal, strategy and action in your marketing plan is subject to change as you evaluate your
progress.

2. Conduct a marketing audit. A marketing audit is a review of all marketing activities that have
occurred in your practice over the past three years. Be as thorough as possible, making sure to review
every announcement, advertisement, phonebook ad, open house, brochure and seminar and evaluate
whether it was successful.

3. Conduct market research. The purpose of market research is to draw a realistic picture of your
practice, the community you practice in and your current position in that community. With this
research, you can make fairly accurate projections about future growth in the community, identify
competitive factors and explore nontraditional opportunities (such as offering patients nutritional
counseling, smoking-cessation programs or massage therapy). Your research may even bring to light
some problem areas in your practice as well as solutions you can implement right away. (See “A guide to
market research” to find out what kind of information you need to gather and where to find it.)

Conducting market research is often the most time-consuming step in this process. However, it’s also
one of the most important steps. It’s from this research that you’re able to find out what your practice
does best and what you need to work on, what the needs of your community are, who your practice
should be targeting and how you should go about it.

4. Analyze the research. Next, you need to analyze the raw data you collect and summarize it into
meaningful findings that will be the foundation for determining which marketing strategies make the
most sense and will get the best results for your practice The research will identify the wants and needs
of your current and potential patients and will help you to define your target audience (for more on
target audiences, see step 5, below). This is also a good time to look back at the goals you’ve chosen.
Based on your research findings, you may need to modify some of your goals.

A strategic marketing plan requires that your practice be defined in terms of what it does for patients.
The research analysis will reveal your practice’s strategic advantages. After looking closely at your own
practice as well as your competitors’, you can ask yourself some key questions: What are the similarities
and differences between your practice and your competitors’? What sets your practice apart from your
competition? Is your location more desirable than your competitors’? Do you offer a broader scope of
services than the competition? Is there a service you provide that no one else in the community
currently offers? Your competitive edge may lie in your style of practice, the range of services you offer,
the ease of making an appointment or the way you and your staff communicate with patients.

A GUIDE TO MARKET RESEARCH

To gather the kind of information you need to develop a strategic marketing plan for your practice, you
need to conduct market research on your practice, your competition and your community. You can’t rely
on intuition, judgment and experience; your practice needs hard data. Although it will take some time to
gather this information, a number of resources are available that can make the process easier for you.

Your practice

Much of the information you need about your own practice can be found through discussions with staff
members and other physicians, or by reviewing your patient records. You can also find out about your
practice and whether it’s meeting the needs of your current patients by asking them to fill out a patient
survey about the practice. Here are some of the questions you need answered about your practice:

 What is the background and history of your practice? Has it been in the current community for a
long time?

 What are your practice’s strengths and weaknesses? Are there problems with scheduling,
cancellations, staff turnover or reimbursement management?

 Who are your current patients in terms of their age, sex, ethnic origin, type of insurance
coverage, chief complaints and where they live?

 What are the services provided by your practice? Who needs these services? Are these needs
changing?

 How is your practice perceived by your patients?

Your competition

You need to find out who your competitors are and what they have to offer. Check with your county or
state medical society and your local hospital to find out how many other family physicians, nurse
practitioners and general internists are in your service area, how long they’ve practiced in that location
and how many have moved into your area over the past five years.

Once you’ve determined who your competitors are, you need to assess them. This information may be a
little harder to come by, but you can try to gather as much information as you can by simply asking other
physicians, listening to your patients, friends and neighbors when they talk about their physicians and
keeping your eye out for competitors’ advertisements. To assess your competition, you need to ask the
following questions:

 What are your competitors’ target audiences and niche markets?

  Why do certain patients or groups of patients particularly like or dislike your competitors?

 How are your competitors viewed within the community?

 What marketing activities have your competitors tried?

Your community

In addition to gathering information about your practice and your competitors’ practices, you need to
learn as much as you can about the people in your community. You can find answers to the following
questions by contacting your local Chamber of Commerce, your state vital statistics department or the
U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov). Census data is available for every state, county, city, ZIP code,
neighborhood, etc.:

 How many people live in your service area? Is the population expected to grow or shrink? What
are the demographic characteristics of the population in your area?

 How is your practice perceived in the community? Are you known in the community?

 Who are your potential patients? Are their wants and needs being met elsewhere in the
community? If not, how can your practice meet those needs?

5. Identify a target audience. With the help of your market research analysis, you should be able to
identify your practice’s “target audience,” which is the specific group of patients to which you’d like to
direct your marketing efforts. Your target audience might include patients of a certain age, gender,
location, payer type or language/ethnicity and patients with certain clinical needs. Keep in mind that
your target audience should not only be the patients you want to attract but also the people who can
influence and provide exposure to that segment of the population. For example, if you wish to treat
patients with arthritis, you might want to get involved in the local and regional Arthritis Foundation and
explore senior organizations in the community. If you want to treat young athletes, you might consider
giving talks on sports safety and first-aid tips to coaches and athletes at the local high schools, colleges
and YMCAs. The key to marketing lies in targeting the audience that your practice can serve better than
your competition – and communicating this to that group.

6. Determine a budget. Before you can decide what specific marketing strategies you want to
implement to achieve your goals, you need to examine your financial information and come up with a
marketing budget. Marketing budgets vary by the type of market a practice is in, the age of a practice
and whether the practice has marketed before. There’s no standard for how much a practice should
spend. However, in our experience, practices in open markets have spent 3 percent to 5 percent of their
annual gross incomes on marketing. If your practice is new, in a highly competitive market or has never
been marketed before, or if you intend to roll out an ambitious new program or service, you can expect
to spend 10 percent or more of your annual gross income the first year you implement the plan.

Some of the initial marketing activities can be expensive. For example, it can cost more than $5,000 to
have a corporate image package (i.e., logo, stationery and collateral pieces) developed by a professional
and as much as $10,000 if you add a brochure. On the other hand, some of the best marketing activities
cost practically nothing. For example, to build your referral network, you might try meeting with new
physicians in your community and sending follow-up/thankyou notes to referring physicians. Big or
small, these are all worthwhile investments that will give the community a positive image of your
practice.

7. Develop marketing strategies. With your budget in place, you can begin to define specific marketing
strategies that will address your goals, reach your target audience and build your patient base.
Remember to focus your strategies on the elements of your practice that can be used to create a special
value in the minds of patients and referral sources. Each strategy should be related to a specific goal and
should be made up of numerous actions. For example, one strategy related to the goal of increasing
patient satisfaction might be to make the office more patient friendly. The actions required for that
strategy might include the following:

 Provide patient satisfaction training sessions to staff;

 Develop a patient self-scheduling system within the practice Web site to eliminate the need to
telephone the office for an appointment;

 Improve the reception-room decor;

 Provide name tags for staff;

 Require staff to introduce themselves to each new patient;

 Conduct post-encounter telephone interviews with new patients within three days of their
appointments.

[Watch for an upcoming article in FPM about specific, cost-effective marketing actions you can try in
your practice.]

8. Develop an implementation schedule. An implementation schedule is a time-line that shows which

marketing actions will be done when and by whom. The schedule should also include the cost of each
marketing action and how it fits into the budget estimates for the 24-month period. When creating the
schedule, carefully consider how the activities will affect the current practice operations and whether
there are sufficient resources (such as staff, time and money) to accomplish the necessary tasks. In some
cases, it may be necessary to whittle down the list or postpone some activities. In other cases, it might
be best to go ahead with full implementation of your plan. If you want to fully implement the plan but
don’t quite have the staffing resources, you might consider bringing in a consultant to coordinate the
marketing activities and/or adding a part-time staff member to handle the majority of the marketing
tasks. The implementation schedule will also give you a basis on which to monitor the progress of your
marketing plan.

9. Create an evaluation process. The value of a marketing plan is its effectiveness, which requires
deliberate and timely implementation and monitoring and evaluation of results. It’s important to
measure your results against the standards you set in establishing your goals. Review your plan
periodically (we recommend quarterly) by comparing your progress with the implementation schedule.
There are several ways you can measure the results of your progress: patient survey scores, referral
sources, increased income, increased new patients and decreased complaints.

If at any time you find your progress does not measure up to your expectations, you need to determine
why. Perhaps the advertisement about a new service you are marketing has not attracted new patients.
If the ad campaign has been carried out as directed without results, dump the campaign and try other
actions. Perhaps you’ll want to try giving a series of seminars specifically targeted to the group you want
to attract or developing a new segment on your Web site for patients that describes the benefits of the
new service. You may even find that if each physician in the practice talks about the new service with his
or her patients as merely informational conversation, favorable results will follow. In other words, the
actions – and even the strategies and goals – in the marketing plan are not written in stone. By regularly
monitoring and evaluating each action, you can always change and try new approaches.

= =====

1. Market Research

Before laying out strategies and tactics, it’s important to start with research – a lot of research. When
we create marketing plans for clients, we spend our first few hours researching the industry and local
market. We focus on understanding where the company fits in the market, where their biggest
opportunities and challenges are, and where resources are available for their marketing efforts.

When business leaders know where their company fits in the industry and market, they will be prepared
to set effective goals for their marketing activities. Without this understanding, companies are flying
blind and any plans created are just a roll of the dice.

2. Competitive Analysis

Next, it’s important to review the competitive landscape. Companies need to identify and study
competitors in depth. What are their strengths and weaknesses? What kind of marketing are they doing,
and is it effective? These are just two examples of the many questions that need to be asked with regard
to competitors.

When a business owner understands their competitors, they can use that knowledge to craft strategies
and campaigns that will give them an edge in the market.

3. Identify Target Audiences

In order to be successful, a business must identify and know its primary target audiences. Learning who
these people are, how they communicate, and what drives them to a company’s products or services
will make success a lot easier for business owners.
Companies need to categorize these audiences into groups, so they can better understand how to reach
them and what messages customers will respond to. While one group may be active on Facebook,
another group may prefer email communication.

4. Set Goals and Objectives

Using the research about the market, competitors, and target audiences, companies can craft their goals
and objectives. There should be both short and long-term goals and objectives that push a company to
reach their marketing goals, but are also achievable.

These goals and objectives will cover a whole year, and should work alongside other business goals. It’s
okay to make adjustments to the marketing goals and objectives over time, but they should challenge
companies to work hard and smart to achieve them.

5. Define Specific Strategies and Tactics

This is the meat of the marketing plan. Using all of the previously mentioned information, companies are
in a position to develop specific marketing strategies, and define the tactics needed for each strategy.

These strategies could be to use advertising to grow revenue by a certain amount within a set time
period, or implement social media to improve customer perception of a business or product. These
strategies will differ for each company and brand, but should focus on using marketing to achieve
particular goals.

With the strategies in place, companies need to determine the specific tactics needed to fulfill the
strategy. This can include creating Google AdWords ads that promote a certain aspect of the business,
or creating daily social media posts that invite participation from followers.

These strategies and tactics will naturally evolve over time as companies achieve their goals, and as
business leaders discover what works best and what doesn’t.

6. Determine Evaluation Methods

Companies won’t know which marketing strategies and tactics are effective if they don’t implement
some form of evaluation. Evaluating marketing comes in many forms. Some marketing tactics allow for
direct data collection, like Google AdWords, where companies can review real data that shows exactly
how well a marketing effort is performing. Other marketing tactics aren’t as easily evaluated, but
companies can get creative in the way they review and assess their marketing practices.

The point is that it’s important to review each strategy and tactic, and determine the best ways to
evaluate them for success, even if the evaluation methods aren’t perfect.

1. State your business's mission.

Your first step in writing a marketing plan is to state your mission. Although this mission is specific to
your marketing department, it should serve your business's main mission statement. Be specific, but not
too specific. You have plenty of space left in this marketing plan to elaborate on how you'll acquire new
customers and accomplish this mission.

For example, if your business's mission is "to make booking travel a delightful experience," your
marketing mission might be "to attract an audience of travelers, educate them on the tourism industry,
and convert them into users of our bookings platform."

Need help building your mission statement? Download this guide for examples and templates and write
the ideal mission statement. 

2. Determine the KPIs for this mission.

Every good marketing plan describes how the department will track its mission's progress. To do so,
you'll need to determine your key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs are individual metrics that
measure the various elements of a marketing campaign. These units help you establish short-term goals
within your mission and communicate your progress to business leaders.

Let's take our example of a marketing mission from the above step. If part of our mission is "to attract an
audience of travelers," we might track website visits using organic page views. In this case, "organic page
views" is one KPI, and we can see our number of page views grow over time.

These KPIs will come into the conversation again in step 4.

3. Identify your buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a description of who you want to attract. This can include age, sex, location, family
size, and job title. Each buyer persona should directly reflect your business's current and potential
customers. Therefore, all business leaders must agree on your buyer personas.

Create your buyer personas with this free guide and set of buyer persona templates. 

4. Describe your content initiatives and strategies.

Here's where you'll include the main points of your marketing and content strategy. Because there is a
laundry list of content types and channels available to you today, you must choose wisely and explain
how you'll use your content and channels in this section of your marketing plan.

A content strategy should stipulate:

 Which types of content you'll create. These can include blog posts, YouTube videos,
infographics, and ebooks.
 How much of it you'll create. You can describe content volume in daily, weekly, monthly, or
even quarterly intervals. It all depends on your workflow and the short-term goals you set
for your content.
 The goals (and KPIs) you'll use to track each type. KPIs can include organic traffic, social
media traffic, email traffic, and referral traffic. Your goals should also include which pages
you want to drive that traffic to, such as product pages, blog pages, or landing pages.
 The channels on which you'll distribute this content. Popular channels at your disposal
include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram.
 Any paid advertising that will take place on these channels.

5. Clearly define your plan's omissions.

A marketing plan explains the marketing team’s focus. It also explains what the marketing team
will not focus on.

If there are other aspects of your business that you aren't serving in this particular plan, include them in
this section. These omissions help to justify your mission, buyer personas, KPIs, and content. You can't
please everyone in a single marketing campaign, and if your team isn't on the hook for something, you
need to make it known.

6. Define your marketing budget.

Your content strategy might leverage many free channels and platforms, but there are several hidden
expenses a marketing team needs to account for.

Whether it's freelance fees, sponsorships, or a new full-time marketing hire, use these costs to develop
a marketing budget and outline each expense in this section of your marketing plan.

You can establish your marketing budget with this kit of 8 free marketing budget templates. 

7. Identify your competition.

Part of marketing is knowing whom you're marketing against. Research the key players in your industry
and consider profiling each one.

Keep in mind not every competitor will pose the same challenges to your business. For example, while
one competitor might be ranking highly on search engines for keywords you want your website to rank
for, another competitor might have a heavy footprint on a social network where you plan to launch an
account.
Easily track and analyze your competitors with this collection of ten free competitive analysis templates. 

8. Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

With your marketing plan fully fleshed out, it's time to explain who's doing what. You don't have to
delve too deeply into your employees' day-to-day projects, but it should be known which teams and
team leaders are in charge of specific content types, channels, KPIs, and more.

Now that you know why you need to build an effective marketing plan, it is time to put on the work.
Starting a plan from scratch can be overwhelming if you haven’t done it before. That’s why there are
many helpful resources that can support your first steps. We’ll share some of the best guides and
templates that can help you build effective results-driven plans for your marketing strategies.

2. Key element/essential of marketing plan

Course Module
Plan Element Description
Reference

What is this plan about?

Summary of key points from the marketing

Executive Summary plan and what it will accomplish. It’s an at-a- N/A
glance overview for a manager who may not
have time to look over the whole thing.

Company Profile What organization are you marketing? N/A

 Course Module
Plan Element Description
Reference

Basic information about the organization, its

offerings, and competitive set.

Who is your target audience?

Market Segmentation Description of the market for the product or Segmentation and
and Targeting service in question, segments in this market, Targeting
and targeting strategy the marketing plan will
address.

What is your strategy, and why is it the right

approach?
Situation and Company SWOT analysis of the external marketing Marketing Strategy
Analysis environment and the internal company
environment, and marketing goals aligned with
the company mission and objectives.

How will you demonstrate good corporate

citizenship?
Ethics and Social Ethics and Social
Responsibility Recommendations for how to address any Responsibility
issues around ethics, social responsibility, and
sustainability.

What information do you need to be

successful, and how will you get it?
Marketing Information Discussion of key questions that need to be Marketing Information
and Research answered, the information needed, and and Research
recommendations for how marketing research
can provide answers.

Customer Decision- Who is your target customer, and what Consumer Behavior
 Course Module
Plan Element Description
Reference

influences their buying decisions?

Making Profile Profile of the primary buyer(s) targeted in the

marketing plan and factors that impact their
choices.

What do you want to be known for?

Positioning and List of competitive advantages, positioning Positioning
Differentiation recommendations, and how to convince the
market you are different and better.

What is the brand you are building?

Branding Brand platform describing the brand: promise, Branding

voice, personality, positioning, and strategic
recommendations for building the brand.

How will you impact your target market?

Marketing Mix (Four This question is addressed by the strategic Marketing Function
Ps) recommendations around each of the four Ps
below.

What are you offering to your target market?

 Product Description of the product or service being Product Marketing
Strategy marketed and recommended improvements to
fit the needs of target segments.

How are you pricing the offering?

 Pricing Strategy Recommendations on pricing strategy and why Pricing Strategies
this approach makes sense.

 Place: How are you distributing the offering? Place: Distribution

 Course Module
Plan Element Description
Reference

Distribution Recommendations on distribution strategy and

channel partners to improve the availability of Channels
Strategy
your offering, and explanations of why this
approach makes sense.

What marketing campaign(s) are you

running?
 Promotion:
Overview of marketing strategy, objectives, Promotion: IMC Strategy
IMC Strategy
messaging, and tactical approach for marketing
campaign(s) to reach your target audiences.

How will you measure the impact you’re

making?

Measurement and KPIs Identification of key performance indicators Promotion: IMC Strategy
(KPIs) and other metrics to monitor
effectiveness of marketing campaign activities
and provide clues about when to adjust course.

How much will this cost?

Budget List of resources required to execute the Promotion: IMC Strategy

marketing plan, how much they will cost, and
how to stay within the allocated budget.

What will it take to make this happen?

Action Plan A detailed, step-by-step plan about what needs Promotion: IMC Strategy
to happen, when, and who’s responsible for
each step to execute the marketing campaign.

Risk Factors What are the risks of this approach? Promotion: IMC Strategy
 Course Module
Plan Element Description
Reference

Discussion of any significant risks or threats

associated with this plan and contingency plans
for addressing them.

1. Market research. Research is the backbone of the marketing plan. Your local library is a great place to
start, offering reports like Standard & Poors or IBISWorld. Some library cards even allow access to online
services from home. Identify consumer buying habits in the industry, market size, market growth or
decline, and any current trends.

2. Target market. A well-designed target market description identifies your most likely buyers. In
addition, you should discuss at least two or three levels of segmentation. A language tutoring business
might target both students and foreign-born employees who want to improve their English.

3. Positioning. What is the perception of your brand in the marketplace? For example, if your restaurant
sells burgers, do customers see you as the place to go for gluten-free or healthy options or the place to
go if you’ve got an appetite for a double cheeseburger? The difference in how the target market sees
you is your positioning. Develop compelling branding and marketing messages that clearly communicate
how you want to be perceived.

4. Competitive analysis. You need to know who your competitors are and how your products and
services are different. What is the price point at which your competitors are selling, and what segment
of the market are they aiming to reach? Knowing the ins and outs of your competitors will help you
better position your business and stand out from the competition.

5. Market strategy. Your marketing strategy is your path to sales goals. Ask yourself “How will I find and
attract my most likely buyers?” This is the core of what the strategy should explain. It should look at the
entire marketplace and then break down specific tactics including such as events, direct mail, email,
social media, content strategy, street teams, couponing, webinars, seminars, partnerships, and other
activities that will help you gain access to customers.

6. Budget. Develop a month-by-month schedule of what you plan to spend on marketing. Also include a
“red light” decision point. For each activity, establish a metric that tells you to stop if it’s not generating
sufficient return on investment (ROI).

7. Metrics. Track your marketing success with Google Analytics for website conversions and a simple
Excel sheet to compare your budget against the actual ROI. Test programs over the course of a 30- to
60-day period, and evaluate the results. Repeat any programs that are delivering sales or sign-ups to
your email list, and get rid of anything that’s not.
A marketing plan certainly will be different industry by industry and based on your company type, but
some of the basic elements remain the same. Your plan should include:

 Executive Summary
 Situation Analysis
 Goals
 Marketing Strategy
 Budget
 Brand Messaging
 Target Audience
 Marketing Tactics
 Implementation
 Exhibits

Executive Summary

The Executive Summary gives an overview of the key elements of the marketing plan, with a specific
focus on product, pricing, promotion, and placement. It describes the offering the company is making in
the marketing plan which also includes people (staff), process (of providing a service), physical evidence
(which makes the service more tangible to potential customers), and philosophy (whereby the product
reflects the philosophy of the organization).

Many readers use the executive summary to determine whether the entire plan is worth reading. This is
your time to impress. Don’t overlook its importance.

Situation Analysis

The situation analysis examines all the aspects that may impact sales of a specific company. It looks at
both the macro-environmental factors that affect many firms within the environment and the micro-
environmental factors that specifically affect the firm.

 Purpose. The purpose of the situation analysis is to indicate the organizational and product
position of the company, as well as the overall survival of the business within the environment.
Companies must be able to provide a summary of opportunities and problems that may be
encountered within the environment to gauge an understanding of their own capabilities within
the market.

 Understanding Competition. Take a moment to evaluate where your company sits in the

competitive landscape. Are you the new kid on the block, or are you the industry leader? This
should influence your plans for the year heavily. Understanding your market position can help
you identify your opportunity. This starts with knowing who your competitors are, what they’re
saying, and what makes you different.Knowing and confirming your differentiators is crucial
when you’re creating your marketing plan. If you know that you’re the best solution for mid-
market companies, or that you’re struggling in competition with your competitors, you’ll be able
 to focus more time and energy around becoming a leader in your industry. If you have the
chance, talk with some of your customers about their experience with your company and your
product. Getting honest feedback can help you adapt your marketing strategy to target the right
audience with the right message.

 Evaluate Past Efforts. Part of this analysis is to look at the past. What happened (or didn’t
happen) in the last year is a great indicator of what you should try to accomplish in the coming
year. Did you make your lead goals? Did your sales team make their sales goals? Did your
company make its revenue goals? These questions aren’t going to give you specifics about what
your plan for the coming year should entail, but it will give you a good grasp on what is
attainable, and where your efforts for the coming year should be focused.

 Talk to Other Teams. Take some time to have conversations with other teams, especially sales,
about how the year went. Does your sales team feel like they were light on leads, or that the
leads weren’t properly qualified? Did your company experience a high churn rate? The overall
health of the company should be marketing’s number one goal, and the only way to plan for
that is to take the time to get a pulse on the current health of your company.

Evaluating what you have done in the past is a great way to improve what you do in the future.

Goals

A good strategy always starts with goals. When you have a clear idea about where you want to go, it’s
easier to get there. These key goals – that align with your company’s initiatives – will give guidance to
the rest of the things you’d like to accomplish throughout the year. So begin your marketing strategy by
outlining what you would like to accomplish this year. List your basic marketing objectives, which may
include a few of the following:

 Build brand awareness

 Increase sales
 Expand into a new market
 Increase profit
 Target new customers
 Develop brand affinity and loyalty
 Grow digital presence
 Launch new products or services
 Grow market share

Once you pinpoint the general goals you want to focus on, set clear objectives for each goal. Use SMART
goal planning to develop each of your plans, so they are:

 Specific
 Measurable
 Achievable
  Realistic
 Time-bound

Shape the rest of your marketing strategy using this initial list of goals.

Once you establish your overall goals, you can then set some sub-goals that keep you on track each day.
For example:

 Key Goal: Develop deeper relationships with our customers to reduce customer churn and
increase customer lifetime value.

o Sub goal 1: Develop five pieces of solid content for our customers
o Sub goal 2: Create an onboarding nurture campaign using email and product newsletters
o Sub goal 3: Create a social campaign around current customers and top users
o Sub goal 4: Rank as a leader on G2 Crowd for customer reviews

This element of the marketing plan states what the organization plans to achieve through the
implementation of the marketing plan.

Marketing Strategy

It’s all good and well to know what needs to be done and the tools you have to accomplish them, but
without a strategy explaining how you are going to use these resources to reach your goals, you may
find yourself running around in circles and running out of resources before the goals are reached. The
strategy that is set forth in the plan must be strong enough to compel investors to put money into the
company or project.

In order for businesses to win market share and stay relevant they need to consider many types of
marketing strategies. Each marketing strategy can communicate to a target market the benefits and
features of a product.

Marketing strategies can also communicate an overall value to their customers. In many cases, this is
the core of building equity or good will in your target markets. Apple, for example, has invested in
creating commercials for television, billboards, and magazines that showcase their products in such a
way that their customers feel an affinity towards Apple’s products.

Budget

Next, focus on the investment you would like to make in your marketing. As you set your marketing
budget, consider a few factors.

 What industry are you in? How much are your typical competitors spending, and what do you
need to spend to compete?
 Should you outsource SEO, or any other part of your strategy to free up resources? Do you have
the budget to do so?
  What do you want to achieve? Do you need to spend more than usual if you want to grow or
expand?
 What is your total yearly revenue? What percentage of revenue do you want to allocate to
marketing?

Go through each of your marketing activities and determine “how much money do we need to achieve
our marketing goals?”

Brand Messaging

Messaging is the heartbeat of marketing. Creating intelligent, educated content helps you build a solid
relationship with your prospects, and can help turn your prospects into happy customers – and is
something that should be key to your marketing plan.

 Mission statement
 Brand promise
 Tone and voice
 Unique selling propositions
 Key terms

As you revise or write these sections, consider the three perspectives that matter to your brand.

 Customer Perspective. What you present to potential buyers, clients, and customers.

 Internal Perspective. What you present to your internal team, and what drives their work.
 Market Perspective. What differentiates your offerings and makes you stand out in your
industry.

Shape your brand messaging to connect on those three levels.

Target Audience

Good marketing does not attempt to reach all people; it’s targeted to connect with a few specific and
defined audiences. As you create your marketing strategy, revise or write target audience descriptions,
so they are concrete and clear.

Define your target audience’s demographic and psychographic characteristics as it relates to:

 Age  Personality
 Location  Lifestyle
 Occupation  Behavior
 Marital or family status  Worldview
 Gender  Attitudes
 Ethnic background  Values
 Income level  Interests and hobbies
 Education level
Then, take it one step further and create a few buyer personas (stories about fictional characters who
are your ideal customers) based on the demographics.

Knowing specifics about what makes a great customer for your company is a great place to start when
figuring out who your marketing efforts should be targeting. Ideal customer profiles usually include
firmographic and demographic information like company size, industry, and common buyer titles.
Knowing your customers allows you to communicate better with them, ultimately boosting retention
rates and the opportunity for upsell and cross-sell.

While reworking your buyer personas, also focus on developing your buyer’s journey. Outline what your
target customer is thinking during each of the following stages.

 Awareness. What is your customer experiencing as they become aware of a problem they are
having? What are their pain points?
 Consideration. What is your customer doing while they are considering solutions for their
problem?
 Decision. How does your customer make the final decision before a purchase? What concerns,
thoughts, and processes guide them?

Your content should not only attract new buyers, but also nurture current relationships you’ve already
created. In order to address your customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey, it’s important to
identify your audience for every piece of content. Is all of your content top-of-funnel, neglecting those
who have already made contact but aren’t yet ready to purchase? Or, are you light on the content that
might attract new buyers to your site? Evaluating these things will make it clear what should be on the
top of list for content creation next year. If you need some guidance on creating a content plan, check
out this 4-step content planning workbook.

Marketing Tactics

Once you have the framework, perspective, and guidelines to direct your marketing strategy, start to
outline your plans. The types of marketing strategy you choose may relate to traditional, digital, or
content marketing. Divide your marketing budget between the strategies that will work best for your
goals and business.

The marketing strategy provides the overall picture of how the stated goals are to be met. The tactical
program gets down to specifics. It details the day-to-day activities in the major marketing areas that will
be performed to fulfill the strategy and achieve the stated goals. Here are the details to consider with
respect to the usual marketing tactics:

 Traditional Marketing. Decide where your business could benefit from traditional marketing
channels like:

o Billboards o Radio and television ads

o Print ads o Cold-calling
o Direct mail o Events
 o Speaking engagements o Networking

 Digital Marketing. Identify where you are lacking or need to improve as it relates to:

o Website and online presence

o Social media
o SEO
o Paid search
o Email marketing
o Retargeting

 Content Marketing. While content marketing is connected to digital marketing, you can

separate it into its own category. As you think about your content marketing plans, consider if
you want to focus on:

o Copy content creation (blogging, articles, e-books, etc.)

o Multimedia content creation (video, slideshows, infographics, etc.)
o Newsletters
o Guest posts
o Content distribution and promotion

This information helps you:

 Identify topics that are relevant to your industry and audience, which can inspire ideas for
content on your site
 Gauge the competition for keywords in your industry, so you know which keywords to avoid due
to high competition.
 Find guest blogging sites and opportunities by identifying keyword gaps on blogs that will be
likely to accept guest posts on the topic.

Implementation

Implementation involves presenting an action plan which lists the specific actions that need to be taken
to reach the goal of the marketing plan. It also lists which department or person in the organization is
responsible for carrying out the action. Make a calendar with important milestones. Creating a strict
calendar for the coming year can be a tricky, so it’s best to schedule out what you can, but be ready to
roll with the punches. Start with the major things, like new product launches, upcoming
announcements, or events you know you’ll be attending this year. Identify all the assets you’ll need such
as emails, press releases, or supporting content. From there, you can make a workback plan to facilitate
manageable lead times. If one of your goals is to create a major asset for each quarter, start scheduling
out drafts and factor in time for editing and revisions.

Exhibits
Exhibits will appear at the end of your marketing plan and will provide the details that back up what you
stated in the main part of your marketing plan.

Nobody knows what next year might have in store. You might have to change direction or shift your
plans significantly, but starting with a plan and schedule will help you achieve the goals you set out to
accomplish in the new year.

Example

Here is an example of how these elements come together, This examples does not have all of the
elements listed above but should give you an idea of how the plan comes together.

 Goal. Increase sales revenue by 25% by the End of the Year

 Objectives.

o Increase Awareness of our website to Target Audience (TA) by 100% by the end of the
year
o Increase Traffic To Website by 50% compared with last year
o Increase Repeat Purchases by 10% compared with last year
o Increase Average Order Value from £50 to £55 this month

 Example Strategy.

o Engage Target Audience at key touch points in their day when receptive to brand
messaging
o Drive traffic from new unique visitors to your website
o Encourage Repeat Purchases from Existing Customers
o Increase Average Order Value from within the cart

 Example Tactics.

o Advertising and Content.

 Run TV ads targeted at TA in the middle of the day

 Run Facebook Advertising at lunchtimes based around similar interests
 Acquire Coverage in National Magazines targeted at TA using PR
 Run Online Banner Advertising on XYZ sites targeted at TA in the evenings
 Sponsor Local Sporting Events
 Create content around the shopping & lifestyle needs of your customers

o Online.

 Ensure website URL is featured in TV ads

 Add URL to Twitter Bio
  Start 10+ conversations per day with TA on Twitter
 Lead Industry based Tweet chats on Twitter, encouraging influencers to join in
 Create video based responses embedded in well SEO’d blog posts with
transcriptsShare video blog posts to people on Twitter (monitoring for people
asking Qs and responding)

o Outreach.

 Email existing customers with referral % deal for new customers

 Print vouchers added to all orders sent out this month
 Competition: invite friends to enter mechanism (opt-in email data capture)

o Promotions.

 Add attractive deals to the cart automatically (worth around 10% of transaction
value)
 Increase the Free Delivery Threshold from $35 to $45
 Add gift wrapping options to the cart (with images of premium gift packaging)

 Auto opt-in to higher cost delivery / up-sells

Obviously this is only a quick overview of what your strategy and tactics may look like for an overly
simplistic goal but should help you set your strategies to differentiate your business.

3. Component of marketing plan

Common Marketing Plan Elements

You can sort marketing plan components into seven different categories:

1. Business: These elements explain your business, so you know how to market its strongest
elements.

2. Marketing outcomes: Sections covering marketing goals and objectives determine the outcomes
you want to see from your marketing plan and strategy.

3. Market: The market-focused sections of a marketing plan analyze your competition and

audience to help you understand your position in the market.

4. Product: Product-focused components set up a plan for marketing and selling your products
using the marketing mix — product, price, place, promotion, packaging, and positioning.

5. Marketing methods: Marketing plan sections related to methods determine the actions you’ll
take to perform marketing.
 6. Action plan: These elements record the who, what, where, when, and how of executing
your marketing strategy.

7. Accountability: After you hash out your marketing plan, you’ll need to explain how you’ll stick to
it. Accountability components set processes in place to monitor your execution and results.

Business Components

1. Mission Statement

Your mission statement condenses your business’s philosophy into a few sentences. Think of it as the
guiding principles that drive your company.

2. Business Summary

A marketing plan’s business summary breaks down what your business does and why. After you add it to
your plan, you can use it as a boilerplate for future opportunities to explain your business.

3. Branding

Branding is the language and imagery associated with your company and product. The branding section
of a marketing plan includes logos, images, writing tone, taglines, and other essential branding assets.

4. SWOT Analysis

The “SWOT” in “SWOT analysis” stands for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.” A
marketing plan’s SWOT analysis records a business’s differentiators and resources it has to take
advantage of them.
Marketing Outcomes Components

5. Marketing Goals

Your marketing plan’s marketing goals are your marketing goals at the highest level. At this point, you
don’t need to get into specific objectives or metrics — just the gist of the goal.
6. Marketing Objectives & Key Results (OKRs)

Once you set your high-level marketing goals, hone in on the objectives and key results (OKRs) you want
to meet under them. Frame your marketing plan OKRs as SMART goals to keep them achievable.

7. Marketing Metrics & Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

With your marketing goals and objectives established, it’s time to identify the metrics you’ll use to
measure their progress. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the metrics that signify your marketing’s
impact on others.

Market Focus Components

8. Market Analysis

The market analysis section of a marketing plan captures all the market factors influencing your
business. It includes details on competitors, regulations, trends, and other market aspects that you’ll
watch as you execute your strategy.

9. Competitor Analysis

A competitive analysis lists your competitors and pinpoints their strengths and weaknesses. With this
knowledge, you can steer your marketing to have advantages over your competition.

10. Target Audience

A marketing plan’s target audience outlines the ideal customers for your company to market to.

11. Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are hypothetical customers that represent members of your target audience. They give
you a person to imagine you’re marketing to as you build and execute your strategy.

Product Focus Components

12. Product

Product is the first “P” in the marketing mix. This strategic marketing plan element defines the items
you’ll sell for a profit.

13. Price

The second marketing mix, “P,” price, establishes your pricing strategy for your product.

14. Place

Time for the third marketing mix “P” — place. Here, you’ll state the places you plan to make your
products or services available.

15. Promotion

Next up in the marketing mix comes promotion: your tactics for promoting your product.
16. Packaging

Some folks stop their marketing mix at promotion, but you can continue with packaging, the fifth “P.”
This component establishes a packaging strategy.

17. Positioning & Messaging

Positioning and messaging are the last “P” in the six-P marketing mix. Positioning refers to your strategy
for establishing your brand identity according to your audience’s wants, and messaging makes up the
messages you’ll use for positioning.

Marketing Methods Components

18. Marketing Tactics

In your marketing tactics section, you’ll choose the actions you’ll take to execute your marketing goals.
Consider them the steps you’ll need to take to make it from your current performance to your desired
performance.

19. Marketing Channels

Marketing channels are the means you’ll use to market to your audience. In this part of your marketing
plan, you’ll decide which marketing channels you’ll use to execute your marketing strategy.

20. Marketing Media & Content

You can take two approaches to a marketing media and content element of a marketing plan. Choose
between sharing commonly used assets for your marketing or showing examples of successful media
and content from the past.

Action Plan Components

21. Roles & Responsibilities

After establishing what you plan to do to execute your marketing strategy, consider listing who will do
what tasks. The roles and responsibilities element of a marketing plan will establish everyone’s role on
your marketing team and how they’ll contribute to your strategy.

22. Marketing Timelines

Breaking up your goals and tactics into a timeline will give you a macro game plan for bringing your
marketing strategy to life. A marketing plan’s timelines offer a roadmap for meeting your goals.

23. Content Schedule

While marketing timelines operate on a macro scale, your plan’s content schedule acts on a micro-scale.
It scopes down to the timetable your content team needs to follow to help you reach your goals.
24. Marketing Plan Checklist

Not sure what tactics from your marketing plan to start with? Make a marketing plan checklist that
prioritizes the actions that should happen first.

25. Marketing Budget

Your marketing budget is the amount of money you plan to dedicate specifically to marketing. Calculate
this section based on the resources you’ll need to execute your plan so you know its feasibility.

Accountability Components

26. Monitoring & Controls

Watching your marketing plan’s progress as you execute it will help you keep your plan on track. A
monitoring and controls section sets up methods to perform that supervision.

27. Reviews & Revisions

A marketing plan’s reviews and revisions component records the reviews and revisions you perform on
your plan or materials related to the plan. You can document the reviews and revisions you’ve made or
outline a review process here.

28. Tracking Guidelines

A marketing plan’s tracking guidelines dictate what success metrics you’ll track, what you’ll use to track
them, and how often you’ll track them. Add your current metric baselines to compare with future
metrics.

29. Reporting Guidelines

After you define how you’ll measure your success, you’ll need to determine what you’ll do to report
those measurements. Your marketing plan’s reporting guidelines will outline how often you’ll report and

what metrics you’ll report on.

30. Contingency Plan

The conditions we assume we’ll have as we execute our marketing plans don’t always match reality.
Your marketing plan’s contingency plan establishes what you’ll do in alternative situations.

1. Market research. Research is the backbone of the marketing plan. Your local library is a great
place to start, offering reports like Standard & Poors or IBISWorld. Some library cards even allow access
to online services from home. Identify consumer buying habits in the industry, market size, market
growth or decline, and any current trends.

2. Target market. A well-designed target market description identifies your most likely buyers. In
addition, you should discuss at least two or three levels of segmentation. A language tutoring business
might target both students and foreign-born employees who want to improve their English.

3. Positioning. What is the perception of your brand in the marketplace? For example, if your restaurant
sells burgers, do customers see you as the place to go for gluten-free or healthy options or the place to
go if you’ve got an appetite for a double cheeseburger? The difference in how the target market sees
you is your positioning. Develop compelling branding and marketing messages that clearly communicate
how you want to be perceived.

4. Competitive analysis. You need to know who your competitors are and how your products and
services are different. What is the price point at which your competitors are selling, and what segment
of the market are they aiming to reach? Knowing the ins and outs of your competitors will help you
better position your business and stand out from the competition.

5. Market strategy. Your marketing strategy is your path to sales goals. Ask yourself “How will I find and
attract my most likely buyers?” This is the core of what the strategy should explain. It should look at the
entire marketplace and then break down specific tactics including such as events, direct mail, email,
social media, content strategy, street teams, couponing, webinars, seminars, partnerships, and other
activities that will help you gain access to customers.

6. Budget. Develop a month-by-month schedule of what you plan to spend on marketing. Also include a
“red light” decision point. For each activity, establish a metric that tells you to stop if it’s not generating
sufficient return on investment (ROI).

7. Metrics. Track your marketing success with Google Analytics for website conversions and a simple
Excel sheet to compare your budget against the actual ROI. Test programs over the course of a 30- to
60-day period, and evaluate the results. Repeat any programs that are delivering sales or sign-ups to
your email list, and get rid of anything that’s not.

1. Market Research

First, you need to understand the environment that you are selling in by using tools like a SWOT
Analysis. You need to understand and organize all the things you can find about your market and the
products or services that you're selling. You probably have a good idea of market dynamics seasonality,
your customers, suppliers and vendors, and what the current climate is like, but you definitely need to
write this stuff down and use it as a benchmark and backbone to build your marketing plan upon.

2. Target Audience

Your marketing strategy starts with your customer and understanding their needs, wants, and
problems. Once you've identified those you can develop a message should speak to them in a consistent
way throughout all your media channels. It's important to have a ideal client description and you need
to use it in your marketing.. It can be the most important in the most challenging part of developing
your marketing plan because it forces you to define a niche market.

The biggest mistake business owners make is to think that they can sell their product or service to a
bigger market. If you don't understand who your ideal clients are, you'll dilute your brand messaging
or product offerings in an effort to appeal to everyone - and virtually ensure that you actually appeal to
no one.

3. Market Strategies

Knowing how you will market is also important. You need to know what your plan of action will be for
your marketing plan in general. What will your pricing strategy be - will you be the higher-priced item or
the low priced option? What sales channels will you use? You could choose between brick and mortar,
online sales, in-person events, wholesale, etc.

What products and services will you offer? Will your strategy be to be the go-to and expert and
Industry and therefore be able to sell your training programs or tools? Will you use content marketing to
drive traffic to the point of purchase? All of these things are very important strategies to consider and
you should choose the ones that you think will work for you and for your target audience. Once you
chosen your market strategy, stick to it like glue.

4. Goals & Objectives

Marketing objectives, once defined, can be the key to your success as they act as a compass for all of
your marketing activities. Even if it’s just you on your team, it’s important to remember you have a
direction when things start to get tough. Or, if you have a team, it keeps everyone on the same page,
using the same message, and working toward the same goals and objectives.

There is a difference in goals and objectives that I want to make sure we define. Goals are statements
you make about the future of your business - they are forward thinking. Objectives are the steps you’ll
take to reach those goals. They are current, measurable and quantifiable.  Your revenue projections and
sales goals also fall under goals and objectives.  They absolutely must be strictly aligned with your
marketing activities.
8 Components of a marketing plan for creative business owners. How to create a marketing plan.

5. Media  & Tactics

You must know which media you're going to use to reach your audience.  First, do your research on your
target audience and find out where they're hanging out and type of content works best on that
platform.  Just because everyone is on Instagram doesn't mean that your target audience is there.

Your target audience may hang out on Pinterest or TikTok or Facebook, or even on LinkedIn. Either
way, understanding each media platform’s specific demographics will help you choose where you need
to show up.  Only pick a few tactics that you know will work with your target audience.

If you're new to that platform, pick a strategy and try it out, adjust as you learn more and master it, and
then you can move on to mastering a new one.

6. Budget and Action Plan

Your marketing budget will be defined by your revenue projections. The more you sell the more you
can spend on promoting your products or services. Each month you should schedule what you're going
to spend and what results you want to see from that marketing activity. Marketing cost can occur
whether you're paying someone in- house, outsourcing, or using your own valuable time to execute your
activities.

Tracking your budget in conjunction with your results is important because it will show what your return
on investment is, and therfor know if you need to spend more, less, or change your budget or your
activities.

7. Metrics

Metrics are where the rubber hits the road in marketing. This is your crystal ball to understanding if
your marketing activity is actually working or not.

Making sure you have internal feedback loops in place, Google analytics installed, and measuring using
S.M.A.R.T. Goals will help you understand if your activities are actually delivering what you want. If
something isn’t working, you’ll know if you’re wasting your time on things that aren’t bringing in
revenue.

8. Content Plan & Schedule

Creating a schedule of how you will promote, market, or advertise your business will help you know
where your marketing is aiming, where you will be publishing your content, and will make sure that you
aren't cannibalizing your other marketing efforts. This is where the chaos and confusion of marketing
can be brought to order in a clear and concise plan.

Using a content calendar will help you see where promotions may overlap each other and will make sure
that you're utilizing all of your chosen media in the best way possible. It's also a great tool to use if you
outsource any of your marketing activities so everyone is on the same page, and is a great place to also
store your metrics and results.
4.define the FF:
a)Swot analysis
What is SWOT Analysis?

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A SWOT analysis is a framework to

help assess and understand the internal and external forces that may create opportunities or risks for an
organization.

Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors. They are characteristics of a business that give it a
relative advantage (or disadvantage, respectively) over its competition.

Opportunities and threats, on the other hand, are external factors. Opportunities are elements of the
external environment that management can seize upon to improve business performance (like revenue
growth or improved margins).

Threats are elements of the external environment that may endanger a firm’s competitive advantage(s),
or even its ability to operate as a going concern (think regulatory issues or technological disruption).

Key Highlights

 SWOT is used to help assess the internal and external factors that contribute to a company’s
relative advantages and disadvantages.

 A SWOT analysis is generally used in conjunction with other assessment frameworks, like PESTEL
and Porter’s 5-Forces.

 Findings from a SWOT analysis will help inform model assumptions for the analyst community.

Examples

Strengths

Strengths may be any number of areas or characteristics where a company excels and has a
competitive advantage over its peers. Advantages may be more qualitative in nature and therefore
difficult to measure (like a great corporate culture, strong brand recognition, proprietary technology,
etc.), or they may be more quantitative (like best-in-class margins, above-average inventory turnover,
category-leading return on equity, etc.).

Weaknesses

Weaknesses are areas or characteristics where a business is at a competitive disadvantage relative to its

peers. Like strengths, these can also be more qualitative or quantitative. Examples include inexperienced
management, high employee turnover, low (or declining) margins, and high (or excessive) use of debt as
a funding source.

Opportunities

The “Opportunities” section should highlight external factors that represent potential growth or
improvement areas for a business. Consider opportunities like a growing total addressable market
(TAM), technological advancements that might help improve efficiency, or changes in social norms that
are creating new markets or new sub-segments of existing markets.

Threats

Threats are external forces that represent risks to a business and its ability to operate. The categories
tend to be similar to the “Opportunities” section, but directionally opposite. Consider examples like an
industry in decline (which is the same as a decreasing TAM), technological innovation that could disrupt
the existing business and its operations, or evolving social norms that make existing product
offerings less attractive to a growing number of consumers.

How to Conduct a SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis is rarely completed in isolation; it generally makes up one part of a broader business
analysis. And while it is itself an assessment framework, a SWOT analysis is also an effective tool to help
summarize other findings.

For example, an analyst can’t really assess a company’s strengths and weaknesses without first
understanding the business and its industry. They may wish to leverage other tools and frameworks in
order to accomplish this, including:

 Hax’s Delta Model – This will help to understand competitive positioning.

 Ansoff’s Matrix – This will help visualize the relative risk of a management team’s growth
strategies.

 Financial ratio analysis – This will help identify trends (year-over-year), as well as a firm’s
relative performance (using benchmarking data).

The same is true for external factors – opportunities and threats. It’s nearly impossible to understand
these without first considering:

 The industry life cycle – Does the business operate in a growing, mature, or declining industry?
This itself informs both opportunities and threats.

 An analysis of the broader business environment or the industry itself – Think frameworks like
PESTEL or Porter’s 5 Forces.

What is a SWOT Analysis Used For?

A SWOT analysis is used differently by different stakeholders.

For example, a management team will use the framework to support strategic planning and risk
management. SWOT helps them visualize the firm’s relative advantages and disadvantages in order to
better understand where and how the organization should allocate resources, either towards growth or
risk reduction initiatives.

The analyst community, on the other hand, may seek to understand (and quantify) strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in order to assess the business more completely.

Consider that findings from a SWOT analysis may help inform model assumptions among analysts. It
could be an equity researcher trying to estimate the fair market value of a company’s shares, or a credit
analyst looking to better understand a borrower’s creditworthiness.

In general, the SWOT framework is considered by many to be one of the most useful tools available for
strategic planning and business analysis.

What is a SWOT analysis?

SWOT analysis is a framework for identifying and analyzing an organization's strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats. These words make up the SWOT acronym.

The primary goal of SWOT analysis is to increase awareness of the factors that go into making a business
decision or establishing a business strategy. To do this, SWOT analyzes the internal and external
environment and the factors that can impact the viability of a decision.

Businesses commonly use SWOT analysis, but it is also used by nonprofit organizations and, to a lesser
degree, individuals for personal assessment. SWOT is also used to assess initiatives, products or projects.
As an example, CIOs could use SWOT to help create a strategic business planning template or perform a
competitive analysis.

The SWOT framework is credited to Albert Humphrey, who tested the approach in the 1960s and 1970s
at the Stanford Research Institute. SWOT analysis was originally developed for business and based on
data from Fortune 500 companies. It has been adopted by organizations of all types as a brainstorming
aid to making business decisions.

When and why should you do a SWOT analysis?

SWOT analysis is often used either at the start of, or as part of, a strategic planning process. The
framework is considered a powerful support for decision-making because it enables an organization to
uncover opportunities for success that were previously unarticulated. It also highlights threats before
they become overly burdensome.

SWOT analysis can identify a market niche in which a business has a competitive advantage. It can also
help individuals plot a career path that maximizes their strengths and alert them to threats that could
thwart success.

This type of analysis is most effective when it's used to pragmatically recognize and include business
issues and concerns. Consequently, SWOT often involves a diverse cross-functional team capable of
sharing thoughts and ideas freely. The most effective teams would use actual experiences and data --
such as revenue or cost figures -- to build the SWOT analysis.
 A SWOT
analysis matrix is made up of these four elements.

Elements of a SWOT analysis

As its name states, a SWOT analysis examines four elements:

 Internal attributes and resources that support a successful outcome, such as a diverse product
line, loyal customers or strong customer service.
 Internal factors and resources that make success more difficult to attain, such as a weak brand,
excessive debt or inadequate staffing or training.
 External factors that the organization can capitalize on or take advantage of, such as favorable
export tariffs, tax incentives or new enabling technologies.
 External factors that could jeopardize the entity's success, such as increasing competition,
weakening demand or an uncertain supply chain.

A SWOT matrix is often used to organize the items identified under each of these four elements. The
matrix is usually a square divided into four quadrants, with each quadrant representing one of the
specific elements. Decision-makers identify and list specific strengths in the first quadrant, weaknesses
in the next, then opportunities and, lastly, threats.

Organizations or individuals doing a SWOT analysis can opt to use various SWOT analysis templates.
These templates are generally variations of the standard four-quadrant SWOT matrix.

How to do a SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis generally requires decision-makers to first specify the objective they hope to achieve
for the business, organization, initiative or individual. From there, the decision-makers list the strengths
and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats.

Various tools exist to guide the decision-making process. They frequently provide questions that fall
under each of the four SWOT elements.
For example, participants might be asked the following to identify their company's strengths: "What do
you do better than anyone else?" and "what advantages do you have?" To identify weaknesses, they
may be asked "where do you need improvement?" Similarly, they'd run through questions such as "what
market trends could increase sales?" and "where do your competitors have market share advantages?"
to identify opportunities and threats.

Example of a SWOT analysis

The end result of a SWOT analysis should be a chart or list of a subject's characteristics. The following is
an example of a SWOT analysis of an imaginary retail employee:

 Strengths: good communication skills, on time for shifts, handles customers well, gets along well
with all departments, physical strength, good availability.
 Weaknesses: takes long smoke breaks, has low technical skill, very prone to spending time
chatting.
 Opportunities: storefront worker, greeting customers and assisting them to find products,
helping keep customers satisfied, assisting customers post-purchase and ensuring buying
confidence, stocking shelves.
 Threats: occasionally missing time during peak business due to breaks, sometimes too much
time spent per customer post-sale, too much time in interdepartmental chat.

How to use a SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis should be used to help an entity gain insight into its current and future position in the
marketplace or against a stated goal.

Organizations or individuals using this analysis can see competitive advantages, positive prospects as
well as existing and potential problems. With that information, they can develop business plans or
personal or organizational goals to capitalize on positives and address deficiencies.

Once SWOT factors are identified, decision-makers can assess if an initiative, project or product is worth
pursuing and what is needed to make it successful. As such, the analysis aims to help an organization
match its resources to the competitive environment.

A SWOT analysis can be used to assess and consider a range of goals and action plans, such as the
following:

 the creation and development of business products or services;

 making hiring, promotion or other human resources decisions;
 evaluating and improving customer service opportunities and performance;
 setting business strategies to improve competitiveness or improve business performance; and
 making investments in technologies, geographical locations or markets.

SWOT analysis is similar to PEST analysis, which stands for political, economic, social and technological.
PEST analysis lets organizations analyze external factors that affect its operations and competitiveness.
SWOT analysis pros and cons

Among the advantages of using a SWOT approach are the following:

 The analysis creates a visual representation of the factors that are most likely to impact whether
the business, project, initiative or individual can successfully achieve an objective.
 By involving experienced cross-discipline team members, a SWOT analysis can encourage many
different perspectives and approaches.
 Such diversity can allow a SWOT analysis to flesh out each element and expose creative ideas
and overlooked problems that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Although a SWOT snapshot is important for understanding the many dynamics that affect success, the
analysis does have limits, such as the following:

 The analysis may not include all relevant factors because some strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats can easily be overlooked or misunderstood.
 The input for each element can often be empirical or subjective and give a skewed perspective.
 Because it only captures factors at a particular point in time and doesn't allow for how those
factors could change over time, the insight SWOT offers can have a limited shelf life.

b)Executive summary
The executive summary is the part of your marketing strategy that outlines the most important findings
from your research. It is a summary of the entire marketing strategy. It offers a high-level overview of
your overall brand objectives, marketing goals and marketing activities.

Executive summaries provide a brief summary of a larger document and are meant to persuade decision
makers to read the larger work. The executive summary is typically the first document of the body of a
report or proposal, and it should function independently of the larger document.

An executive summary of your marketing plan gives a brief overview of how you intend to reach your
target audience and drive conversions. Here's what you should include.

As the name suggests, an executive summary provides a high-level overview of your marketing plan. Its
primary purpose is to reduce complex topics and projects within your greater marketing plan to the
basics and show your short-term and long-term goals. In one or two pages, it describes the key results of
your marketing research and provides an overview of your brand objectives, marketing goals and related
activities. 

c) Mission statement, Vision , Goals,

Values
Mission statements describe an organization's reason for existence, vision statements describe the
ideal state that the organization wants to achieve, and values statements list the principles that guide
and direct the organization and its culture.

A vision statement is a descriptive picture of a desired future state; a mission statement presents how
you intend to achieve that vision.

While the vision statement typically isn’t included in your plan document, it is absolutely part of your
Marketing Plan. The reason? Your Marketing Plan must be consistent with the company’s overall
business goals as spelled out in your vision statement. That can prevent you from undertaking a
marketing initiative that doesn’t align with your company goals. (For example, if your vision is to be the
largest plumbing supplier in the Northeast, it would be highly inefficient to advertise in a publication
with a nationwide circulation.

Mission

What we want to accomplish

Your mission drives the business and its values. It is the reason for your existence. Your mission should
guide, focus and direct your organization towards your ultimate destination.

 What do we do? Specifies what you deliver to your customers. This is not the process you
provide but the results you achieve.
 How do we do it? Defines the type of products and services you sell and deliver to your
customers.
 Who do we do it for? Identifies the target market that is most likely to buy your products and
services.

Knowing the answers to these questions provides focus for your business and helps you move from the
present into the future.

Masterful Marketing®’s mission is to help small businesses navigate the complex maze of online
marketing. Our Masterful Marketing® Game Plan builds a professional web presence for the business
while educating the business owner on the best marketing strategies for their business.

Vision

What we want to become

Your vision is a vivid description about what you want your business to be so that it inspires and
motivates you. A well-defined vision creates a mental picture of the business that you are striving to
build.

If you are looking at your business 3 or 5 years from now, what would you see? What would be hearing
from customers? How would people describe your business?
Masterful Marketing®’s vision is to be recognized as one of the top 3 marketing brands for small
businesses in the United States.

A clear vision statement helps you in many ways. It:

 Becomes your compass to keep you heading in the right direction.

 Helps decide whether an opportunity should be pursued based on whether it gets you closer to
your vision.
 Enables you measure your progress, set goals, establish priorities, and know when to say no.
 Helps you focus on the important tasks while removing anything that wastes time.

Goals

Well-defined, targeted statements that give you clarity, direction and focus

It is important for the small business owner to define metrics that will lead you to your vision. Your
business outcome goals are defined by functional area of your business such as revenue, sales, customer
service, operational efficiency or human capital. Each functional area should effectively have one
outcome goal within a 90 day period. Your business should focus on only one outcome goal based on
revenue or new clients. 

Outcome goals for marketing will normally support the revenue and sales business goal because
marketing is the main driver for reaching your top line revenue targets. And if you reach your revenue
goals, does it matter if you increased your email list by 200 subscribers per month?

That is a loaded question because yes, growing your list, increasing traffic to your website and making
your brand more visible in the market are all important. But what is the result of doing those things?

Hence why I prefer to define my marketing goals as a performance based projects, where each defined
project has measurable results and help you move closer to your outcome goal. We create our
marketing action plan in 90 day increments because what is planned within 90 days is achievable.
Anything you plan beyond 90 days usually fails because you risk taking on too much and achieving
nothing.

Performance Based Projects

Combine your strategies and tactics into a manageable plan

Each project is based on a particular strategy and is broken into the various tasks that need to be
completed. Combining a strategy and all its associated tactics into a performance-based project helps
you focus on what needs to be done to complete that project.

One marketing strategy may be using content marketing to drive new qualified leads. Qualified leads
eventually turn into new clients or revenue, thereby supporting your business outcome goal.

So an example of a performance based project for content marketing would be the following.
Implement content marketing activities that drive 10 new qualified leads per week.

Now you can fill in the tactics or marketing activities that will help you get more leads.

 Develop a new lead magnet to attract more qualified leads to sign up for our list.
 Create an editorial calendar for blogging and social media posts
 Blog twice a month
 Share content daily on our social media platforms
 Create an email lead nurturing campaign that is sent to new subscribers of our email list.

It’s useful to include your tactics in a two week sprint noting priority so you get the most important
activities underway or completed. One thing I’ve seen in using this 90 day action plan and 2 week sprint
is we all try to cram too much within a two week time frame. and soon learn that you need to be much
more selective in what you work on.

Stay Focused

As small business owners, we want to do many different things believing that more is better. In
marketing, you are better off selecting fewer, more focused activities that help you make progress.
Having too many goals, projects and tactics will only set you up for failure and disappointment. Define
your mission, vision and goals for the business that will drive the marketing strategies and tactics. Figure
out what’s important for you to accomplish in the next 90 days and go for it. Otherwise, you will be
constantly distracted and won’t accomplish anything.

Need help with a marketing plan? Sign up for my email list and receive your FREE Masterful
Marketing® Create Your Small Business Marketing Plan eBook!

Marketing Goals – Your Pathway to Success

The best way to improve your marketing results is to set marketing goals. Without goals that can be
tracked and measured, how will you know if you are successful?

Marketing Action Plan - Action Steps to Achieve Your Goals

A simple marketing plan is your road map for achieving your goals and guiding your decisions
throughout the year. It consists of both a marketing strategy and an action plan. Learn how to create a
plan for your busine
d) marketing objective
What are marketing objectives? Marketing objectives are a set of clearly defined, measurable goals
established as part of a marketing plan. Marketing objectives provide specific targets to be met within a
time frame, such as “decrease customer acquisition cost by 10% by the end of next quarter.

Marketing objectives are the outcomes a brand wants to generate from its marketing activities. They
should be measurable (and realistic) so that you can map out your efforts in a strategic and focused way.
Not to be confused with marketing goals, your objectives identify how you’ll know if you’ve reached a
goal–i.e. “increase the share of voice by 20% by the end of Q3” (objective) vs “be seen as a leader in the
industry” (goal).h

What are marketing objectives?

Marketing objectives are actionable targets designed to provide not just overall direction, but clear and
specific actions. They are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based (These are often
called SMART goals, an acronym you’ve likely heard before!).

Marketing objectives should be tied to the overall success of the company, not just an arbitrary number.

For example, a marketing goal might be to increase website traffic by 50%.

But how will you get there and what will the purpose of that traffic be? When do you want to hit that
number?

Objectives outline more than just a specific number, but also how you plan to reach that number and
what impact that endpoint will have on the company as a whole.

Give it to me straight—what’s the difference between a marketing objective and a goal?

Goals and objectives are two sides of the same coin. In general, business goals define the endpoint,
while objectives are a more specific outline of how your marketing team will get there.

These terms are often used interchangeably and may have different definitions at different companies.
For digital marketers, however, they have distinct differences:

 Marketing objectives are specific, measurable objectives designed to provide both instruction

and targets.

 Marketing goals are broader destinations designed to outline how your business can benefit
from digital marketing efforts.

5. 2 broad categories of goods

1. Consumer Products:
Consumer products are those products that are bought by the final customer for consumption.

Consumer products are of four types:

ADVERTISEMENTS:

i. Convenience products,

ii. Shopping products,

iii. Speciality products, and

iv. Unsought products.

i. Convenience Products:

Convenience Products are usually low priced, easily available products that customer buys frequently,
without any planning or search effort and with minimum comparison and buying effort. Such products
are made available to the customers through widespread distribution channels-through every retail
outlets. This category includes fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) like soap, toothpaste, detergents,
food items like rice, wheat flour, salt, sugar, milk and so on.

ii. Shopping Products:

Shopping products are high priced (compared to the convenience product), less frequently purchased
consumer products and services. While buying such products or services, consumer spends much time
and effort in gathering information about the product and purchases the product after a careful
consideration of price, quality, features, style and suitability.

Such products are distributed through few selected distribution outlet. Examples include television,
air conditioners, cars, furniture, hotel and airline services, tourism services.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

iii. Speciality Products:

Speciality Products are high priced branded product and services with unique features and the
customers are convinced that this product is superior to all other competing brands with regard to its
features, quality and hence are willing to pay a high price for the product. These goods are not
purchased frequently may be once or twice in lifetime and are distributed through one or few
exclusive distribution outlets. The buyers do not compare speciality products.

iv. Unsought Products:

Unsought product is consumer products that the consumer either does not know about or knows
about but does not normally think of buying. In such a situation the marketer undertakes aggressive
advertising, personal selling and other marketing effort. The product remains unsought until the
consumer becomes aware of them through advertising. The price of such product varies. Examples of
unsought product are cemetery plots, blood donation to Red Cross, umbilical cord stem cell banking
services.

2. Industrial Products:

Industrial Products are purchased by business firms for further processing or for use in conducting a
business .The distinction between consumer product and industrial is based on the purpose for which
the product is bought. Like a kitchen chimney purchased by a consumer is a consumer product but a
kitchen chimney purchased by a hotel is an industrial product.

Business products include:

i. Material and parts,

ii. Capital items,

ADVERTISEMENTS:

iii. Supplies, and

iv. Services.

i. Material and parts – Material and parts include raw material like agricultural products, crude
petroleum, iron ore, manufactured materials include iron, yarn, cement, wires and component parts
include small motors, tires, and castings.

ii. Capital items – Capital items help in production or operation and include installations like factories,
offices, fixed equipments like generators, computer systems, elevators and accessory equipments like
tools office equipments.

iii. Supplies – Supplies include lubricants, coal, paper, pencils and repair maintenance like paint, nails
brooms.

iv. Services – Services include maintenance and repair services like computer repair services, legal
services, consultancy services, and advertising services.

1. Convenience Goods:

Convenience Goods, usually of semi-durable nature, refer to those comparatively high value items
which the customers buy after paying consideration as to quality, price, design, etc. The buying
motives of the customers exhibit a high degree of differentiation in the purchase of these items.
Examples are; shoes, ready-made garments, cosmetics, etc.

2. Speciality Goods:
Speciality Goods refer to those items which possess unique characteristics and/or brand identification
and for which a significant group of buyers are habitually willing to make a special purchasing effort.
These are usually of durable nature and high unit value, and the customers’ brand preferences dictate
their buying motives. Examples are; T.V., radio, refrigerators, steel furniture, etc.

3. Industrial Goods:

Industrial Goods refer to those goods which are destined to be sold primarily for use in producing
other goods or rendering services as contrasted with the goods destined to be sold primarily to the
ultimate consumers.

2. Industrial Goods:

Industrial goods of different classes are discussed below:

1. Raw Materials:

Raw materials may be agricultural items (e.g. cotton) or items of semi-finished nature (e.g. steel) or
parts for the finished product to be assembled (e.g. parts of a motor vehicle).

2. Equipments:

Equipment’s may be basic installations (e.g. boiler, turbines) or accessory products (e.g. calculator,
time clocks). These items move directly from the producers to the industrial users.

3. Fabricated Items:

Fabricated items consist of those parts that are used in the assembly of finished goods like
automobiles, etc.

4. Operating Supplies: 

Operating supplies such as fuel, coal, etc. neither form a part of nor enter into the product but are
necessary for the running of industries.

Consumer products are those which are bought by consumers for ultimate consumption and not for
resale. These goods can be further classified based on how consumers buy them. Consumer products
include (1) convenience products, (2) shopping products, (3) specialty products, and (4) unsought
products.

Industrial products are those intended for use in making other products or operating a business or
institution. Thus, industrial products are differentiated from consumer products based on their
ultimate use. The types of Industrial goods are raw materials, component parts, major equipment,
accessory equipment, operating supplies, and services.
6. Define New Product
A new product is a product that is new to the company introducing it even though it may have been
made in same form by others. For example, in the area of toilet soaps, different brands introduced by
each company are that way, new products as it is new to the company. New products are those whose
degree of change for customers is sufficient to require the design or re-design of marketing strategies.

A new product is a good, service, or idea that is perceived by some potential customers as new.

7. Classification of Consumer Goods

Consumer goods contrast with intermediate goods in the fact that intermediate goods are used to
create the final consumer good. Goods such as copper, coal, iron, or other raw materials, are not
consumer goods because they are used to make a final consumer good. For instance, copper can be
used to create trays, bowls, and other containers which are considered consumer products. These are
examples of intermediate goods that are in turn used to create final consumer goods.

KEY POINTS

 Consumer goods, also know as final goods, are those that are consumed by the customer and
are not used to make other goods.

 There are 3 main types of consumer goods. They are durable goods (that last longer than 3
years), nondurable goods (that last less than 3 years), and pure services (that are consumed
instantly).

 There are 4 main types of consumer goods. They are convenience goods, speciality goods,
shopping goods, and unsought goods.

Types of Consumer Goods

1. Convenience Products

The term ‘convenient’ means ‘involving little trouble or effort’. So convenience products refers to
those that require little trouble or effort to purchase. They are both easy to access and frequently
purchased.

Examples include: food, drink, laundry detergent, toilet paper, deodorant, and toothpaste. These
goods are all easily available from the local supermarket and consumers purchase them on a daily,
weekly, or monthly basis. Hence why they are known as convenience products.

Example of Convenience Goods

Those products that are frequently purchased are classified as ‘convenience products’ because there is
little effort required in buying them. For instance, you may have a favourite type of cereal you
purchase each week. You go straight to the cereal aisle and pick it up without thinking. This is
convenient as you don’t spend half an hour debating whether you prefer Coco-Pops or Cheerios.

Characteristics of Convenience Products

The main characteristics of Convenience Products include:

 Frequently purchased

 Easily available

 Relatively low price

 Non-durable

2. Shopping Products

Shopping goods contrast with convenience products in the fact that they are brought less frequently
and are not so easily available. Consumers take more time to decide on what to buy and take a more
deliberate effort before making a decision.

Such examples include furniture, clothing, video games, mobile phones, fridges, and other white
goods. These are not so easily accessible as convenience goods such as fruit, vegetables, and cereals.
Nor are they so frequently purchased. Therefore the consumer takes more time in deciding.

Example of Shopping Goods

Shopping products require the consumer to take more time to decide. This is because the opportunity
cost of a wrong decision is more costly than trying a new loaf of bread. For instance, when deciding
between a new mobile phone, the consumer may end up paying $500 for a phone they hate.
Therefore, the incentive to make the correct decision is greater.

Characteristics of Shopping Products

The main characteristics of Shopping Products include:

 Infrequently purchased

 Not so easily available

  Compared to other similar goods

 Greater opportunity cost

 Durable

3. Speciality

Speciality products are goods that consumers do not take long when deciding to purchase. They have
unique characteristics like being rare, or being an original design, so are largely incomparable to other
products. For example, speciality products include: sports cars, rare paintings, high-spec laptops, rare
ornaments, or designer clothing.

Speciality products are naturally unique, but they can also rely on brand recognition. For instance,
Ferrari is known for its high quality sports cars, and Picasso is well known for his masterpieces. The
products they produce are specialities in the fact that they represent a high level of quality.

Example of Speciality Goods

Speciality products are similar to Shopping products in the fact that they are infrequently purchased,
are durable, and have a high opportunity cost. However, what differentiates them is the fact that
consumers do not take so long to decide. The brand image of a Ferrari or a Picasso sells itself, so if the
consumer has the money and likes the brand, they easily part with their cash.

Characteristics of Speciality Products

The main characteristics of Speciality Products include:

 Infrequently purchased

 Rare

 Expensive

 Durable

4. Unsought

Unsought products can range from new innovations to old goods. They are simply goods that
consumers do not know about or would think to buy. Equally, they are not necessarily goods that the
consumer would want to buy.

Unsought products often offer no direct benefit at the time of purchase. For example, insurance is an
unsought good. Yet few consumers actually want to buy insurance, but do so in order to reduce their
risk.

They can require significant levels of marketing and investment to make them ‘sought’ after goods
instead. This is because consumers are not necessarily aware of the benefits the product provides.

For example, life insurance is an unsought good. Nobody really wants to think about their death and
won’t associate any benefits to it, so largely think of it as an unnecessary purchase. However,
aggressive marketing campaigns have increased the awareness of the benefits such as pre-paid
funeral care, legal fees, etc. As a result, such products can turn into ‘sought’ goods when consumers
become aware of the true benefits.

Characteristics of Unsought Products

The main characteristics of Unsought Products include:

 Undesirable

 Consumers lack of knowledge on the product

 Usually purchased to prevent a negative outcome

 Infrequently purchased

Consumer Goods Examples

When looking at consumer goods, it is important to remember that they are goods that are for final
consumption. Unlike capital or intermediary goods, consumer goods is the final product. They are not
used to make other products, but are intended to be consumed by themselves.

Therefore, one of the characteristics on consumer goods is whether the consumer can buy it. Then,
whether this good is used to make another product. If it is not used to make another product, then it
will be a consumer good.

Doughnuts

Doughnuts are an example of a convenience consumer good. It is frequently purchased and is easily
accessible from local stores. At the same time, it meets the characteristics of a convenience product as
it is a non-durable good at a relatively low price.

This lends itself to convenience as the cost of an incorrect decision is low, meaning the consumer
takes less effort and time in deciding. Hence, a convenient product.

Ferrari
A Ferrari is an example of a speciality consumer good. It is unique, expensive, durable, and
infrequently purchased. Yet it is not a shopping good because it is largely incomparable to other such
products due to its unique features. Whilst shopping goods are comparable, speciality goods are not.

Gucci Handbag

A Gucci handbag is an example of a speciality consumer good. Similarly to the Ferrari, it is unique and
largely incomparable to other products. Gucci has designs that are unlike others, so if the consumer
likes the design, they won’t be able to get it elsewhere. By contrast, goods such as bread or basic
laptops are almost indistinguishable.

Laptop

Laptops generally fall under speciality products or shopping products. High-end laptops such as Apple
MacBook Pro’s or Google’s Pixelbook can be classified as speciality consumer goods. This is because
they are unique in their design without a real comparable product.

Apple has its own software with unique features, so is therefore a specialist product. By contrast, low-
end laptops can be classed as shopping consumer products. This is because there is a wide variety
with little differential between them. There are many low-end laptops on the market and it requires
some level of research to find which is the best one.

Life-Insurance

Life insurance is an example of an unsought consumer good. Consumers do not necessarily desire it,
nor is it common for the average consumer to actively go out to purchase it. Instead, the product
relies on heavy advertising and sales techniques to draw in consumers.

It comes under an unsought good because consumers do not purchase it willingly, but rather because
they want to avoid adverse effects. For example, life-insurance has no immediate benefit to the
consumer like a doughnut or a laptop. The benefit is at a much later date, which is why the product is
not sought after.

Pre-paid Funeral

Pre-paid funerals are also an example of an unsought consumer good. Consumers do not purchase it
out of pure desire and willingness. Rather, they purchase it because they do not want the adverse
effects to occur.

For example, a father may fear that his children will be unable to afford such a service. So rather than
burden his children with the cost and responsibility, it is paid for in advance. There is no real
immediate benefit to the father, which makes it an unsought good.

Durable and Non-durable Consumer Goods

Consumer goods are therefore those goods that we purchase and use. They can be split into durable
consumer goods, and non-durable consumer goods.

Durable goods are those that we are able to consume over a long period of time. For example, fridges,
microwaves, and motor vehicles are all durable consumer goods. In other words, durable consumer
goods are not completely consumed after one use. By contrast, a non-durable consumer good such as
bread is completely gone after it is consumed as part of a sandwich.

Non-durable consumer goods are those that no longer exist once consumed. In other words, they can
only be consumed once. For example, food, drink, and cigarettes are all non-durable. Once you eat a
banana, you can no longer eat it again because it’s in your stomach. By contrast, durable goods like a
motor vehicle can be used over and over again.

consumer good, in economics, any tangible commodity produced and subsequently purchased to satisfy
the current wants and perceived needs of the buyer. Consumer goods are divided into three categories:
durable goods, nondurable goods, and services.

Consumer durable goods have a significant life span, often three years or more (although some
authorities classify goods with life spans of as little as one year as durable). As with capital goods
(tangible items such as buildings, machinery, and equipment produced and used in the production of
other goods and services), the consumption of a durable good is spread over its life span, which tends to
create demand for a series of maintenance services. The similarities in the consumption and
maintenance patterns of durable and capital goods sometimes obscure the dividing line between the
two. The longevity and the often higher cost of durable goods usually cause consumers to postpone
expenditures on them, which makes durables the most volatile (or cost-dependent) component of
consumption. Common examples of consumer durable goods are automobiles, furniture, household
appliances, and mobile homes. (See also capital.)

Consumer nondurable goods are purchased for immediate or almost immediate consumption and have
a life span ranging from minutes to three years. Common examples of these are food, beverages,
clothing, shoes, and gasoline.

Consumer services are intangible products or actions that are typically produced and consumed
simultaneously. Common examples of consumer services are haircuts, auto repairs, and landscaping.
8. What is Market Research?

What Is Market Research?

Market research, also known as "marketing research," is the process of determining the viability of a
new service or product through research conducted directly with potential customers. Market research
allows a company to discover the target market and get opinions and other feedback from consumers
about their interest in the product or service.

This type of research can be conducted in-house, by the company itself, or by a third-party company
that specializes in market research. It can be done through surveys, product testing, and focus groups.
Test subjects are usually compensated with product samples or paid a small stipend for their time.
Market research is a critical component in the research and development (R&D) of a new product or
service.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

 Companies use market research to test the viability of a new product or service by communicating
directly with a potential customer.
 With market research, companies can figure out their target market and get opinions and feedback
from consumers in real-time.
 This type of research can be conducted in-house, by the company itself, or by an outside company
that specializes in market research.
 The research includes surveys, product testing, and focus groups.
 Market research is a combination of primary information—information gathered directly—or
secondary information, which is information an outside entity has already gathered.

What is Market Research?

Market research is a systematic process of collecting, analyzing and interpreting
information. The information could be about a target market, consumers, competitors
and the industry as a whole. This is the foundation of any successful company. The
research has a number of different purposes – from identifying a new market to
launching a new business.

Market research helps entrepreneurs make well-informed decisions. It can take the
guesswork out of innovation, and funnel resources into ideas and projects that hold the
most potential. Businesses at different stages of growth carry out market research for
different reasons. There is a list of ways of how businesses can use market research:

 Determine the feasibility of a new business. If market research indicates there’s little
or no demand for the product or service, the business is unlikely to succeed.
 Identify and develop potential new markets.
 Keep close tabs on marketing trends and develop strategies on how to stay ahead or
adapt to changing market conditions.
 Test the demand for new products or features.
 Ensure optimal product placement – how, when and where should a product enter the
market.
 Improve and innovate their business. You can identify issues with certain business
aspects such as customer service early. This can help companies overcome costly
disruptions later.
 Boost the success of their promotional campaigns. By gauging customer sentiment
and understanding the perception of their brand, businesses can better shape their
branding and marketing strategies.

What is Market Research?

Market research is a technique that is used to collect data on any aspect that you want to know to be
later able to interpret it and, in the end, make use of it for correct decision-making.

Another more specific definition could be the following:

Market research is the process by which companies seek to collect data systematically to make better
decisions. Still, its true value lies in the way in which all the data obtained is used to achieve a better
knowledge of the market consumer.
The process of market research can be done through deploying surveys, interacting with a group of
people, also known as a sample, conducting interviews, and other similar processes.  

The primary purpose of conducting market research is to understand or examine the market associated
with a particular product or service to decide how the audience will react to a product or service. The
information obtained from conducting market research can be used to tailor marketing/ advertising
activities or determine consumers’ feature priorities/service requirement (if any).

8. Market Segmentation

What is meant by market segmentation?

Market segmentation is the process of dividing the market into subsets of customers who share
common characteristics. The four pillars of segmentation marketers use to define their ideal customer
profile (ICP) are demographic, psychographic, geographic and behavioral.

What Is Market Segmentation?

Market segmentation is a marketing term that refers to aggregating prospective buyers into groups or
segments with common needs and who respond similarly to a marketing action. Market segmentation
enables companies to target different categories of consumers who perceive the full value of certain
products and services differently from one another.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

 Market segmentation seeks to identify targeted groups of consumers to tailor products and
branding in a way that is attractive to the group.
 Markets can be segmented in several ways such as geographically, demographically, or behaviorally.
 Market segmentation helps companies minimize risk by figuring out which products are the most
likely to earn a share of a target market and the best ways to market and deliver those products to
the market.
 With risk minimized and clarity about the marketing and delivery of a product heightened, a
company can then focus its resources on efforts likely to be the most profitable.
 Market segmentation can also increase a company's demographic reach and may help the company
discover products or services they hadn't previously considered.

Market segmentation is the practice of dividing your target market into approachable groups. Market
segmentation creates subsets of a market based on demographics, needs, priorities, common interests,
and other psychographic or behavioural criteria used to better understand the target audience.

What is market segmentation?

Market segmentation is a process that consists of sectioning the target market into smaller groups that
share similar characteristics, such as age, income, personality traits, behavior, interests, needs or
location. 

These segments can be used to optimize products, marketing, advertising and sales efforts.

Segmentation allows brands to create strategies for different types of consumers, depending on how
they perceive the overall value of certain products and services. In this way they can introduce a more
personalized message with the certainty that it will be received successfully. 

10. Bases of Market Segmentation

There are five main types of segmentation bases. Each of these works well with different businesses
and industries, so it's essential to consider your options before deciding on the best for your needs. 

The five main types of market segmentation are demographic, psychographic, behavioral, geographic,
and firmographic.

Demographic market segmentation

Demographic segmentation divides people based on their age, income, education level, and occupation.
Some examples of companies that use demographic market segmentation include insurance providers,
healthcare companies, and banks. 

If you focus on demographics, you can divide customers in many ways, including by age, income,
occupation, gender, or race. Each category is a segment. Marketers target these groups with their own
messaging and tactics to appeal specifically to them.

Demographic segmentation enhances product value by allowing a product to mean something more to
customers. It can make a product more personal to the target group.

Psychographic market segmentation

Psychographic segmentation divides people based on their values, attitudes, and interests. Some
examples of companies that use psychographic market segmentation include car manufacturers,
clothing retailers, and political campaigners. 

This segmentation strategy focuses on an individual's psychological and emotional needs and
motivators. It may sound complicated to uncover, but tools are available to help you learn what
customers use your solution for. Techniques like market research, focus groups, and surveys can help
you better understand your target audience.

Behavioral market segmentation 

One of the most widely used types of segmentation is behavioral. In behavioral segmentation,
marketers focus on consumers' behaviors and characteristics — how they spend their time, hobbies,
personality types, etc. 

Marketers who follow a behavioral-based segmentation strategy use existing data to create profiles of
groups that exhibit commonalities within specific markets. Marketers then target these groups with
products and services that appeal to their interests and needs. Behavioral segmentation divides people
based on their buying habits and brand loyalty. Some examples of companies that use behavioral
segmentation include supermarkets, hotels, and fast-food restaurants.

In addition to these three popular types of market segmentation, there are other bases certain
businesses should consider, including geographic and firmographic. 

Geographic market segmentation

Geographic segmentation divides people based on where they live, while firmographic segmentation
divides people based on their work. 

If you're an international company or plan to expand someday, understanding different customer habits
and preferences related to specific geographic regions is a crucial part of your role. Customers in
Western Europe might respond differently to campaigns than people who live in Asia.
No two geographic regions, even two that are side by side, are exactly alike. People living on opposite
sides of a national border might have vastly different cultures and habits. This is why it's important to
know where your customer base is coming from.

Firmographic market segmentation

Firmographic segmentation is data that describes a business, including where it's located, its legal
structure, whether it's privately or publicly owned, how many employees it has, and so on.

Firmographic segments are typically stable unless there's a significant change within a company such as
a merger, acquisition, or bankruptcy.

Bases Of Market Segmentation

Segmenting is dividing a group into subgroups according to some set bases. These bases range from age,
gender, etc. to psychographic factors like attitude, interest, values, etc.

Gender

Gender is one of the most simple yet important bases of market segmentation. The interests, needs and
wants of males and females differ at many levels. Thus, marketers focus on different marketing and
communication strategies for both. This type of segmentation is usually seen in the case of cosmetics,
clothing, and jewellery industry, etc.

Age Group

Segmenting market according to the age group of the audience is a great strategy for personalized
marketing. Most of the products in the market are not universal to be used by all the age groups. Hence,
by segmenting the market according to the target age group, marketers create better marketing and
communication strategies and get better conversion rates.

Income

Income decides the purchasing power of the target audience. It is also one of the key factors to decide
whether to market the product as a need, want or a luxury. Marketers usually segment the market into
three different groups considering their income. These are

 High Income Group

 Mid Income Group

 Low Income Group

This division also varies according to the product, its use, and the area the business is operating in.

Place
The place where the target audience lives affect the buying decision the most. A person living in the
mountains will have less or no demand for ice cream than the person living in a desert.

Occupation

Occupation, just like income, influences the purchase decision of the audience. A need for
an entrepreneur might be a luxury for a government sector employee. There are even many products
which cater to an audience engaged in a specific occupation.

Usage

Product usage also acts as a segmenting basis. A user can be labelled as heavy, medium or light user of a
product. The audience can also be segmented on the basis of their awareness of the product.

Lifestyle

Other than physical factors, marketers also segment the market on the basis of lifestyle. Lifestyle
includes subsets like marital status, interests, hobbies, religion, values, and other psychographic factors
which affect the decision making of an individual.

Types Of Market Segmentation

Geographic Segmentation

Geographic segmentation divides the market on the basis of geography. This type of market
segmentation is important for marketers as people belonging to different regions may have different
requirements. For example, water might be scarce in some regions which inflates the demand for
bottled water but, at the same time, it might be in abundance in other regions where the demand for
the same is very less.

People belonging to different regions may have different reasons to use the same product as well.
Geographic segmentation helps marketer draft personalized marketing campaigns for everyone.

Demographic Segmentation

Demographic segmentation divides the market on the basis of demographic variables like age, gender,
marital status, family size, income, religion, race, occupation, nationality, etc. This is one of the most
common segmentation practice among marketers. Demographic segmentation is seen almost in every
industry like automobiles, beauty products, mobile phones, apparels, etc and is set on a premise that
the customers’ buying behaviour is hugely influenced by their demographics.

Behavioural Segmentation

The market is also segmented based on audience’s behaviour, usage, preference, choices and decision
making. The segments are usually divided based on their knowledge of the product and usage of the
product. It is believed that the knowledge of the product and its use affect the buying decision of an
individual. The audience can be segmented into –

 Those who know about the product,

 Those who don’t know about the product,

 Ex-users,

 Potential users,

 Current Users,

 First time users, etc.

People can be labelled as brand loyal, brand-neutral, or competitor loyal. They can also be labelled
according to their usage. For example, a sports person may prefer an energy drink as elementary (heavy
user) and a not so sporty person may buy it just because he likes the taste (light/medium user).

Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic Segmentation divides the audience on the basis of their personality, lifestyle and attitude.
This segmentation process works on a premise that consumer buying behaviour can be influenced by his
personality and lifestyle. Personality is the combination of characteristics that form an individual’s
distinctive character and includes habits, traits, attitude, temperament, etc. Lifestyle is how a person
lives his life.

Personality and lifestyle influence the buying decision and habits of a person to a great extent. A person
having a lavish lifestyle may consider having an air conditioner in every room as a need, whereas a
person living in the same city but having a conservative lifestyle may consider it as a luxury.

Nature Of A Market Segment

A market segment needs to be homogeneous. There should be something common among the
individuals in the segment that the marketer can capitalise on. Marketers also need to check that
different segments have different distinguishing features which make them unique. But segmenting
requires more than just similar features. Marketers must also ensure that the individuals of the
segment respond in a similar way to the stimulus. That is, the segment must have a similar type of
reaction to the marketing activities being pitched.

A good market segment is always externally heterogeneous and internally homogeneous.

Segmentation Bases

1. Psychographic Segmentation: Someone's psychological traits, lifestyle preferences, and how and
why they think a certain way.
 2. Demographic Segmentation: Demographic traits including age, education, and gender

3. Geographic Segmentation: The location that your audience lives or works in.

4. Firmographic Segmentation: A company's attributes such as size, industry, or location.

5. Behavioral Segmentation: An audience member's actions, habits, interactions.

1. Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation refers to someone's psychological traits. This includes

your audiences' lifestyle preferences and patterns, and why they think the way they do.
It also covers their typical activities, interests, and opinions.

2. Demographic Segmentation

Demographic segmentation refers to the statistical description and socioeconomic traits

of your audience. This includes age, education, and gender, birth rates, gender,
marriage status, income, and employment status.

3. Geographic Segmentation

Geographic segmentation refers to the location in which your audience resides and/ or
works. You can go as broad or as granular as you want with geographic segmentation
— for instance, you may group your audience by continent, country, state/ city, town,
neighborhood, and so on.

4. Firmographic Segmentation

Firmographic segmentation refers to a company's attributes and is helpful for B2B

companies that are developing their segmentation bases. This includes but is not limited
to their size, industry, and location.

(You might think of firmographic segmentation as demographic segmentation but for a

business.)
5. Behavioral Segmentation

Behavioral segmentation refers to an audience group's actions, habits, and interactions.

If you're thinking this sounds a bit like demographic segmentation, you're not wrong. But
it goes deeper into one's buying habits than demographic segmentation does.

For instance, behavioral segmentation provides insight into the benefits that one gets
from buying and using a certain product as well as how ready (or not ready) they are to
convert into a customer.
Basis of Market Segmentation

1. Gender

The marketers divide the market into smaller segments based on gender. Both men and women have
different interests and preferences, and thus the need for segmentation.

Organizations need to have different marketing strategies for men which would obviously not work in
case of females.

A woman would not purchase a product meant for males and vice a versa.

The segmentation of the market as per the gender is important in many industries like cosmetics,
footwear, jewellery and apparel industries.

2. Age Group

Division on the basis of age group of the target audience is also one of the ways of market
segmentation.

The products and marketing strategies for teenagers would obviously be different than kids.

Age group (0 - 10 years) - Toys, Nappies, Baby Food, Prams

Age Group (10 - 20 years) - Toys, Apparels, Books, School Bags
Age group (20 years and above) - Cosmetics, Anti-Ageing Products, Magazines, apparels and so on

3. Income

Marketers divide the consumers into small segments as per their income. Individuals are classified into
segments according to their monthly earnings.

The three categories are:

High income Group

Mid Income Group
Low Income Group

Stores catering to the higher income group would have different range of products and strategies as
compared to stores which target the lower income group.

Pantaloon, Carrefour, Shopper’s stop target the high income group as compared to Vishal Retail,
Reliance Retail or Big bazaar who cater to the individuals belonging to the lower income segment.

4. Marital Status
Market segmentation can also be as per the marital status of the individuals. Travel agencies would not
have similar holiday packages for bachelors and married couples.

5. Occupation

Office goers would have different needs as compared to school/college students.

A beach house shirt or a funky T Shirt would have no takers in a Zodiac Store as it caters specifically to
the professionals.

Types of Market Segmentation

 Psychographic segmentation

The basis of such segmentation is the lifestyle of the individuals. The individual’s attitude, interest, value
help the marketers to classify them into small groups.

 Behaviouralistic Segmentation

The loyalties of the customers towards a particular brand help the marketers to classify them into
smaller groups, each group comprising of individuals loyal towards a particular brand.

 Geographic Segmentation

Geographic segmentation refers to the classification of market into various geographical areas. A
marketer can’t have similar strategies for individuals living at different places.

Nestle promotes Nescafe all through the year in cold states of the country as compared to places which
have well defined summer and winter season.

McDonald’s in India does not sell beef products as it is strictly against the religious beliefs of the
countrymen, whereas McDonald’s in US freely sells and promotes beef products.

11. Distinction of Consumer Market & Industrial

Market
While consumer marketing deals with product markets (think finished goods that are largely bought by
individuals, like shoes, clothing, books, etc.) industrial marketing deals with factor markets, or highly
specialized products and services for select consumers (think labor, machinery or unfinished products
(1).)

What is the difference between consumer market and industrial market?

The consumer market is made up of companies selling products to individuals. On the contrary, the
industrial market comprises companies selling products to other companies.

What is the meaning of industrial market?

It is a marketplace that is exclusively made up of companies. In this space, companies sell products to
other companies that use them for their own gain.

What are the characteristics of the industrial market?

The industrial market is characterized by how it is made up of fewer markets than the consumer market.
The uniqueness of its consumers is found in the fact that they, similar to suppliers, also provide goods
and services.

Difference Between Consumer Market And Industrial Market:

As an industrial owner, you cannot refute the importance of industrial marketing strategies in scaling the
sales of your highly specialized products or services. However, you might have always wondered how
industrial marketing is different from consumer marketing. Well, the difference between these two
marketing strategies can be understood by recognizing the distinction in their target markets.

 1.

Consumer Market

It is a market that involves the sale of goods/services to the end-users. So, if you are selling, say books,
groceries, bags, or shoes, that are purchased by customers who are going to use or consume it finally,
then you are in the consumer market.

 2.

Industrial Market

It is a factor market that involves the sale of unfinished or semi-finished goods that are used by buyers
as a raw material in their production process. For example - when a manufacturer of large toy-making
machinery sells it to another business who uses this machinery to produce and sell toys in the market,
then these businesses are in the industrial market.

Difference between Industrial and Consumer Marketing:

1.Industrial Marketing

Industrial marketing or B2B marketing refers to the marketing of industrial goods/services in the
industrial market. Industrial marketing relies on the tools of competitive tendering and effective
communication channels between industrial companies and professional buyers of their highly
specialized products. It involves a protracted sale-purchase process that aims at providing innovative
solutions to the problems of industrial customers.
2. Consumer Marketing

Consumer or B2C marketing refers to the marketing of finished products/services to the potential end-
customers in a consumer market. It relies on gaining extensive knowledge about the tastes and
preferences of the end-customers. It focuses on generating demand through marketing tools such as
advertising campaigns, attractive packaging, after-sales services, etc.

Criteria Industrial Marketing Consumer Marketing

Products are complex and highly Products are simple and easy-to-use
Type of Products specialized that require expert that can be straightforwardly mass-
knowledge. marketed.

Professional and trained business

owners who use the product of End-users who purchase the product
Target Audience your industrial company as a or avail the services for final
factor of production, i.e. as an consumption and gratification.
input in their production process.
 To create awareness of the availability
To influence institutional buyers
of a product or service by a particular
Motives of Sellers throughout their complete
brand and generate demand by
industrial buying process.
highlighting the salient features

Dynamic advertising that induces the

Developing and nurturing
partnerships that focus on building
Strategic Focus
long-term relations with business
partners by gaining their trust.
impulsive buying behavior of the
customers and makes them loyal to
the brand. Customers may or may not
be the long-term users of the
products/services.

Digital Content marketing (posting

blogs, white papers, case studies
on informational websites),
Marketing Strategies
personalized presentations to
clients, distributing product
samples, etc.
Various online and offline advertising
and marketing tools including print,
television, and several online or social
media platforms.

Encompasses all the operational

competencies and processes Encompasses only highlighting the
Marketing Elements employed by the company in benefits/utilities that customers will
delivering value to their derive by using the product/service.
customers.

Narrow and constricted as

Wide and extensive as consumer
industrial marketers deal with the
marketers market the
Market Reach limited magnitude of businesses
products/services to potential mass
requiring products/services of
customers.
their clients.

The differences between industrial marketing and consumer marketing are subtle but significant.
Consumer marketing focuses on individuals using demographic research and other predictive data to
craft campaigns. Of course, in industrial marketing, it is still important to know your audience and
carefully craft your message but underestimating or not understanding what’s unique about industrial
marketing can result in less effective campaigns and less efficient financial investments.
1. Long-term vs. Short-term Emphasis

Consumer marketing targets customers who may or may not be long-term users of a product. For
example, if a restaurant is offering a limited-time menu item, they can market to someone who may
only go to their restaurant for that item. The customer could hear a radio ad, make the choice to try the
new food item, and the marketing is judged a success.

Industrial marketing is different. Instead of advertising to individuals who are able to make quick
decisions that result in quick successes, industrial marketing is geared toward developing and nurturing
long-term, strategic relationships with both individuals and companies.

2. More Than Just the Message

The second way that industrial marketing and consumer marketing differ relates to how the market
responds to change.

If market needs shift in the industrial sector, simply changing the marketing message is not enough.
Usually, there are underlying operational changes that can have a significant impact on marketing.

For example, if a company recognizes that it needs to be a more lean facility and undergoes a
fundamental operational overhaul, it is going to want to communicate the value of those process-
oriented changes to its customers.

An industrial marketer needs to be able to market not only the products that are available to a
customer, but the competencies and processes their company uses to deliver value to their customers.

3. It’s a Process, Not a Journey

Continuing the restaurant example above, industrial marketing is not as simple as getting an individual
to buy a new burger by intervening appropriately during a customer journey. The industrial buying
process is much more complex — and inevitably involves multiple stakeholders, each with their own
journeys.

This highly nuanced process needs to be analyzed and understood by industrial marketers in order to
develop and execute successful industrial marketing campaigns.

Some questions that may arise along the way include:

 Is your product one that your company will need to install for your customer? In that case, the
installation service you provide may be as important as the product when developing a
marketing message for customers.

 Will there be service calls to help maintain the product and increase efficiency? An industrial
marketer knows that identifying and sharing these benefits are key to developing a
comprehensive message.
  Can you customize your product to meet specific needs? Often, a value-added engineering
capability can make all the difference.

These types of questions are not secondary for industrial buyers or industrial marketers. They are
central to the industrial buying process and have the potential to make or break it.

4. Different Stakeholders Speak Different Languages

An industrial marketer must be fluent in various stakeholder “languages,” depending on who they are
communicating with.

For example, in one situation a product’s marketing could be tailored to speak to an engineer who is just
beginning the design phase for a new product. His concerns may be focused on the longevity of a
supplier’s component, its mechanical specifications, and the speed with which it can be acquired.

On the other hand, an industrial marketer must also take into consideration the concerns of the
procurement department at some point in their marketing communications. Procurement will likely
focus more on the initial cost of the product, general brand reputation, and potential cost savings down
the line.

Part of a successful, comprehensive, industrial marketing campaign is understanding and communicating

to all those who are part of the decision-making process, and doing so using languages (e.g., technical,
financial) that speak to their unique desired outcomes.

Managing this process requires a more intricate understanding of the dialogue that happens between
decision makers than in traditional consumer marketing, where there typically is no decision-making
committee and messaging can be based around an individual’s demographic criteria.

5. So Many Paths to Market

For the industrial marketer, the path to market is oftentimes winding. Industrial buyers can come into
contact with a company and its products via direct marketing, distributors, independent reps, and
resellers, among others — and often do so during the course of their customer journey. All of these
channels have the potential to project different messages and compete with one another for a
customer’s attention. In which case, coordinating the messaging deployed by these diverse channels is a
must.

Thinking of a distributor, for example, the marketing message and materials they use would need to be
tailored so they could act as an ambassador for your brand and products. Likewise, resellers may require
unique incentive programs and more in-depth training materials to fulfill their part of your agreement.

An industrial marketing team has to understand these different pathways in order to meet the challenge
of aligning all channels with one another to maximize success.

Learning More about How Industrial Marketing and Consumer Marketing Differ
Understanding the different nuances of industrial marketing can make a huge difference when
developing and launching a successful campaign. Mastering these peculiarities will lead to growth in all
aspects of business. And working with a company that knows how to get these pieces right will save you
time and money.