I have written marketing plan theory a long while ago. Now, we talk about best practices to develop a marketing plan.

Action oriented is a good character which must be possessed by us. In reality, being a doer is the ultimate mark of a victorious person. But I have read a business magazine that many marketers got into trouble doing mistaken way. Why It's stated "mistaken way"? Because from their marketing activities, they have a bad result. The company growth doesn't increase like they want.

Marketing expert said if you want to do the right marketing activities the right way you must start with a marketing plan. Yes, Good marketing plan.

A plan without implementation is nothing, likewise doing with a plan is nothing. Now, I talk about step to develop a marketing plan. 

phase 1- understand our market and competition
First of all, we must understand the market and what it wants. It's simple, "if you try to sell product that other do not want, other will not buy it"

To gain an understanding of our market, we should create self-assessment like below:
 

• Are there parts in my market that are being underserved?
• Are there parts of my market for my product/service big enough to make money?
• How many shares of that market do I want to obtain?
• Is there too much competition in the segment of my market to be competitive?
• Does my market want or value my unique competitive offering?

After doing those, we go to phase 2, understand our customer.
Knowing our customer closely is a fundamental step to easy sales. The key to great marketing are:  who our customer are, what our customer want, what motivates them to buy.
 

How do we know our customer? By answering this self-question:

• How does my potential customer normally buy comparable products?
• What kind of habits does my customer have?
• What are my target customer's primary motivations for buying?

phase 3- choose a niche
The marketplace is jam-packed with competition. You will have more succeed jumping up and down in a small puddle than a big ocean. Carve out a niche and dominate it. How to dominate the niche will be discussed later.

phase 4- Create our marketing message
Our marketing message should contain what we do to our prospect, persuade them to become our customer. Marketing message must be short and to the point and contains:

• An explanation of our target prospect's problem.
• Proof the problem is important and should be solved
• An explanation about why we are the only person that can solve those problems.
• An explanation of the benefits people will receive from using our solution.
• Add examples and testimonials from current customers.
• Brief explanation about prices, fee, payment terms.

phase 5- Decide our marketing mediums.
Marketing mediums are the communication channel we use to convey our marketing message. Make the channel match with our marketing message and market. Samples of mediums are newspaper ads, posters, telemarketing, email marketing, flyers, radio ads, television ads, billboards, banners,brochures, yellow pages, magazine ads, google Adwords, word of mouth, website, etc.

phase 6- set marketing goals
Goals of our marketing activities including financial elements such as sales revenue, gross profit, sales per sales person, nonfinancial elements such as unit sold, contract signed, client acquired, etc.

After setting goals, we can develop marketing budget related with steps above. By doing this, we can calculate marketing ROI.

There we have it, simple step making a marketing plan. Try to implement it, and see the result....