Moving from a marketing strategy to a plan

Your marketing plan should identify practical steps and tactics to deliver the marketing strategy. If you don’t feel ready to start developing your marketing plan, don’t worry. Just read the instructions below and return to them when you are ready. If you feel ready now, grab a piece of paper and complete your plan. Once it is complete, share your experience with us and with your fellow learners in the comments.

Marketing Plan:

These steps will help you develop your marketing plan. If your organisation has a number of different products/services, you may need to develop a number of marketing plans for each respective product/service.

Objective:

Each objective of the marketing plan should be focused on enabling the organisation to deliver its mission and strategic aims. Marketing objectives are typically focused on achieving one or more of the following results:

1. Generate new customers/beneficiaries from within your target audience.

2. Retain your existing customers/beneficiaries.

3. Get existing customers/target audience to purchase more products or services from your organisation.

4. Create systemic change in the way in which your product or service is delivered/paid for.

Tools:

1. Price: how much will you need to charge for your product or service?

2. Place: which audience segment and routes to market will you focus on for delivery of this objective?

3. Promotion: your communications plan – which features, benefits and values will be communicated to this specific audience segment and through this specific route to market?

Plan:

1. Goals: what goals will you need to meet to make sure you deliver the objective?

2. Time frame: when will you need to achieve these goals?

3. Resource/budget: what will you need to invest in to achieve these goals?