What is the marketing plan, its importance and components (comprehensive guide)

In order to succeed in achieving the goals of your company or project, you must know how to formulate these goals in the right way, and in order to do so, you must know what the marketing plan is.

The marketing plan is what all successful companies in various fields depend on, so if you:

A marketer in a company and you want to achieve better results for yourself and your company.

A young entrepreneur who wants to start marketing your business.

An entrepreneur looking to improve the results of his project.

A beginner marketer and you want to develop your marketing skills.

I think that you will achieve your goals more easily when you know in detail what the marketing plan is, and the most important characteristics that it must have in order to be successful.

In the next few minutes you will learn:

What is the marketing plan plan.

Characteristics of a marketing plan.

The importance of preparing a marketing plan.

Elements that are a must in any marketing plan.

That's not all, at the end of this article we will shed light on how to create your own marketing plan step by step, no matter what field or industry you work in.

All this in a simple style with providing many practical examples so that the image becomes clear to you, this is our habit on the winners site.

What is the marketing plan?

The marketing plan is a roadmap that any company follows in order to organize, implement and follow up on different marketing strategies to achieve the company's goals in a specific period of time.

You can consider the marketing plan as the compass for any company or organization to be able to know:

The goals that the company seeks to achieve within a specified period of time.

The current position of the company in the market.

The position of the company's main competitors in the market.

Presentation of the most important needs of the clients targeted by the company.

The different e-marketing strategies that the company will rely on.

Determine the expected time period for the implementation of each of the objectives of the marketing plan.

The main factors that will be monitored to determine the success of the marketing plan or not.

The marketing plan is one of the most important factors for the success of different companies and institutions, because it puts all the points above the letters, in order to help the company grow, prosper and compete in the market.

Marketing plan characteristics

The practical marketing plan must have several characteristics in order to achieve the desired goals:

It should be brief enough (remember this is just a plan, not a comprehensive guide).

It should be easy and clear so that anyone in the company can see and understand it.

The marketing plan is usually monthly, quarterly or annually so that it is easy to follow up and amend it periodically.

The marketing plan should be based on real numbers and studies, not just expectations or guesswork.

All possible departments must participate in the manufacture of the marketing plan (marketing - customer service - operation and production).

The marketing plan must be appropriate to the nature of the field in which the company operates, as well as the nature of the products and services it provides.

Thus, the company ensures that the marketing plan will be effective as long as it is built on strong and solid foundations.

The importance of preparing a marketing plan

The marketing plan has many benefits that may be underestimated by some startups, which end up incurring huge losses due to confusion in decisions, especially economic decisions.

The importance of preparing the marketing plan lies in the following:

Defining the company's business goals that the company wants to achieve, not just a vision or general goals.

Accurately understand the needs of the target market by the company.

Helping the company make the right decisions based on numbers and information.

Determine the extent to which different marketing strategies affect the company's position in the market.

Helping the company to know the best marketing channels that it should focus on.

Helping the company to implement various marketing initiatives without much risk.

Reviewing and evaluating the return on investment in various marketing strategies.

Define the different roles of each department of the company.

Facilitate the process of communication between the company's departments.

For this reason, there is no successful company in any field or industry that does not depend on marketing plans, regardless of the nature of the field in which it operates.

What is the difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy?

I have mentioned the word marketing strategy more than once and you may ask what is the difference between it and the marketing plan, then let me answer this simple question.

The marketing strategy is the framework on which the company is going to achieve a specific marketing goal in terms of (the nature of the content - the type of marketing campaigns - the tools used).

Let me give you an example so that the picture becomes clear to you. Suppose you own a tourism company, and you have identified some goals that you want to reach, such as:

Increasing the number of the company's clients by 10% within 3 months.

Expansion of the company's activity and opening a new market in East Asia.

Doing customized tourism programs for students.

Then you determined the cross lines that you will rely on from studying the market and competitors and what they offer, and then you determined the budget that you want to allocate to these goals.

After that, I decided to rely on Instagram marketing, Facebook marketing and YouTube marketing to get customers, and achieve previous goals based on the information I collected.

All of the above is a marketing plan, and how to promote on each platform is a marketing strategy:

Facebook Marketing Strategy .

Instagram marketing strategy

YouTube Marketing Strategy

I think that now you clearly know the difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy.

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The main components of a marketing plan

In order to know exactly what the marketing plan is, you have to know the elements that depend on it in order to take them into account when implementing the plan for your company, which I will mention to you in the following points:

1. A quick summary of the plan itself

At the beginning of a successful marketing plan, there should be a quick summary that anyone can understand. This summary is the main goals that the company wants to achieve from this marketing plan.

It should also briefly explain the company's current situation, and the main ways in which the company will rely in achieving the objectives of the marketing plan.

When drafting this summary, keep the following in mind:

The summary should not exceed 3 or 4 paragraphs in order to be easy to understand.

The summary of the marketing plan is not an explanation of the company's general goals or vision, but rather it should be a summary of the goals that you want to achieve during the duration of the marketing plan - which I mentioned before.

Remember that this summary is the introduction to the marketing plan, so it is preferable that you do not write it until after the completion of the plan itself.

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2. Comprehensive analysis of the company's current position

In order to be able to develop any marketing plan for any company, you must know its current position in the market very accurately, identifying strengths and weaknesses.

This analysis will be the basis on which the rest of the marketing plan will be built, so it must be accurate and far from any kind of emotions or appreciation.

Also keep in mind that this analysis should shed light on the different approaches that the company has followed in the past so that it can be taken into consideration in the future.

This analysis becomes easy after your first marketing plan, because then you will have all the information you will need and the factors that you will rely on in the evaluation process.

3. The goals of the company itself

Some large companies have specific goals, especially related to strengthening their position in the market, or entering a new field or sector, in addition to the various growth goals.

Some examples of these goals:

Increasing the company's capital by 5%.

Increasing the company's share price in the market by 2% within 4 months.

Achieving a growth in the company's income at a rate of 20% within a year.

Many companies need to put these goals in the marketing plan so that all the different departments in the company cooperate with each other to achieve these goals.

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4. Marketing objectives

In order for the company to achieve the general goals, it must define some marketing goals. For example, for the company to achieve a growth rate of 20% within a year, this may require:

Sales increased by 30% over last year.

Increasing the number of marketing channels that the company relies on.

Collaborating with some different brands to increase awareness in the market.

Marketing goals are the goals that the company must achieve to contribute to reaching the same business goals during a specific period of time, and all of this must be clear in the marketing plan.

Note: Some small businesses may not need to differentiate between general and marketing objectives.

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5. Target segments

What is meant by the segments here is the group of customers that the company is targeting, for example, does the company target:

Working women from the age of 20: 35.

Undergraduate students in all disciplines.

Men over the age of 45.

This is not all, the study of the target segments of the company must go in depth to know everything possible about this audience in terms of its nature, the problems it faces and its personal habits.

In marketing, these segments are called Buyer Persona, with each Persona representing one of the segments targeted by the company.

There are many ways to get the necessary information to create a Buyer Persona such as:

Do a survey for your existing customers.

Search the different places where your customers are online.

Knowing all the possible search words that the audience uses to find your products or services online.

Search forums and Facebook groups.

Determining the buyer's personality accurately is one of the features of a successful marketing plan, and for this we will, God willing, publish a complete guide on this matter, so follow us constantly so as not to miss it.

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6. Study competitors

The marketing plan should contain information about the market and competitors, and their strengths and weaknesses so that the company can exploit them.

The market study is one of the most important elements of the marketing plan, because it determines the methods of promoting different products and the angles that will be relied upon to distinguish the company from its competitors in the market.

7. Budget

Each marketing plan has a specific budget that the company allocates in order to carry out the required tasks, and based on this budget, the marketing strategies that the marketing team will rely on are determined.

8. Marketing channels

There are many marketing channels that can be relied upon to achieve the company's marketing objectives, and within some marketing channels there are also sub-channels, which in turn may contain more specialized channels.

The marketing plan here must contain a detailed explanation of the marketing channels that will be relied upon, and the marketing budget must be distributed among these channels.

Example: In the case of giant companies, they distribute their marketing budget to almost all available marketing channels, such as:

TV

Read media

the radio

Internet

And a marketing channel such as the Internet can be divided into sub-marketing channels such as:

social media

search engines

Smartphone Applications

If we want to go into more depth, we can divide a sub-marketing channel such as social media to other sub-channels such as:

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Of course in small companies things are less complicated, but in any case the marketing plan must contain an accurate and detailed description of the marketing channels that will be used.

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9. Monitoring and evaluation factors

In order to complete the marketing plan, it must contain the determinants that will be monitored and followed up to ensure the effectiveness of the plan itself, and the extent of its success in achieving the desired objectives.

Not only that, there is also a process of evaluating the performance of the departments and individuals responsible for implementing the marketing plan, and their commitment to the set plan.

There are many examples of these factors:

The number of new customers.

The number of new potential customers.

The number of new visits to the website or online store.

Ad conversion rate.

And other factors that are easy to track and evaluate using various marketing tools, and as I mentioned previously, identifying these factors is essential for evaluating individuals as well.

I think you now know in detail what a marketing plan is and what elements it depends on, and now you may want to create your own marketing plan.

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