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Develop your marketing plan

Develop your marketing plan

Writing a marketing plan can help you define your marketing strategy and identify the best activities and channels to market your products or services. Learn how to develop a marketing plan with our marketing plan template.

Having a marketing plan can help you to:

  • identify your target market and how your product or service can benefit it
  • identify how you might attract new customers
  • encourage your existing customers to continue purchasing your product or service
  • set goals and time frames for your marketing activities
  • map out a strategy to reach your target audience, including the messages, channels and tools you’ll use
  • evaluate your marketing activities
  • provide a marketing budget and see your return on investment.

Our marketing plan template helps you identify who your customers are, how you’ll meet their needs and what marketing tactics you might undertake.

Marketing plan template DOCX

Our template steps you through the process of developing a succession plan with links to extra information if you need it.

You may want to check our tips below before you start.

1. Analyse your market

Market research can help you to understand your strengths, weaknesses and the opportunities that you can take advantage of. Analysing your own business and your competition can help you identify where you’re positioned in the market.

It’s important to analyse your competition to identify their strengths and weaknesses. This can help you refine your marketing strategy and what’s unique about your business. 

A strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis can help you determine where your business fits within the market and your unique selling point. Use it to help identify what your business is doing well and how you can improve.

Identifying and understanding your customers is an essential part of your marketing plan. Not everyone is your potential buyer, so it’s important to have a clear understanding of your target market early on.

2. Set your goals and objectives

Once you’re clear about your business and its positioning, you can start thinking about what you want to achieve. Think about your main business goals, whether it’s the size of your business, expansion plans or desired sales. Set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound (SMART) goals to increase your chances of success in achieving them.

3. Outline your marketing strategies

Once you’ve set some goals, consider what marketing activity, process or price will help you achieve them.

Try and choose marketing activities that suit your business and your customers. For example, if you want to target young adults, newspaper advertising may not be as effective as a social media campaign.

Choosing multiple activities that complement each other is a good way to help you get your message across. For example, if you’re trying to establish a new product in the market, you may choose to advertise on the local radio, as well as setting up social media channels and introducing a low-cost pricing strategy for first-time buyers. When used together, these strategies complement each other and help you reach a broader market.

4. Set your marketing budget

Knowing how much you have to spend on marketing and how to spend it is critical to the success of your business. A marketing budget will ensure you accurately calculate your marketing campaign or advertising.

When developing your marketing budget, make sure you’re only spending money on the activities that contribute to your current marketing goals. Advertising and promotion can be expensive. Make sure to pick options that will give you the best value while still reaching your target customers.

5. Keep your marketing plan up-to-date

It’s important to evaluate your marketing activities. Analysing your results and being aware of new marketing trends is important to keeping your marketing plan up-to-date and reaching your business goals. You should tweak and change your plan as your business and market grow and change.

Research your market

Research your market

Market research is a valuable tool for all businesses. It can help you to understand your market, including potential customers and their needs. Learn how to research your market, including goods and services, customers and your competitors.

Why research your market

Market research helps you to understand your customers and their needs, as well as what your competitors are doing.

This understanding can help you to better focus your marketing efforts, make informed decisions about your business and make the most of opportunities. It’s important to make sure market research is part of your ongoing business plan and daily operations.

Read our steps for researching your market to get started.

 

Your market research should cover your:

  • customers
  • competitors
  • product or services
  • suppliers
  • business location and local area
  • industry and market trends.

There are both primary and secondary methods of research you can use to conduct your market research.

  • Primary research involves gathering information yourself first-hand.
  • Secondary research uses information and data that has already been collected and analysed by others.

Before you embark on gathering first-hand information about your market, you can use research that has already been done. For example, look for market reports, government statistics, and trade and industry association publications.

Sources of government statistics and data

Government statistics by topic:

  • Food statistics
  • Health and safety information
  • Immigration statistics
  • Labour market information
  • Quota management and statistics
  • Taxation statistics
  • Tourism research
  • Tourism statistics
  • Trade and investment data
  • Transport statistics
  •  

Testing your business idea with customers can give you an idea of how successful it might be. You can do this by talking to people about your idea and seeking their feedback on your product or service. This could be through direct contact, surveys, focus groups or social media polls.

You may also consider a test run or pilot test of your product or service with a small number of clients to fine tune your idea. This will help work out if your idea is viable, find any problems, develop a price for your product or service, and see how quickly your business might grow. This may help you identify where your products or services fit in the market and how they differ from your competitors.

You can also work out your product or service’s:

  • positioning – whether your products or services are high-end, competitive or a low-cost alternative to the products or services offered by your competitors. Read more on positioning your business.
  • anticipated demand – the amount of products or services your customers are likely to purchase from you. For example, how much will an individual customer buy in 6 months or 12 months?

Ways to collect customer data include emails, online surveys, interviews, and even talking directly to your customers.

You can discover:

  • what their needs are
  • what they’re willing to pay for different products
  • the anticipated demand for your products.

Finding out how your customers think and behave (including their likes and dislikes) can also help you better target your marketing activities.

Using existing customer data

  • customer relationship management (CRM) database
  • customer loyalty or reward program information
  • point of sale (POS) system and sales records
  • inventory management system
  • records of customer complaints, feedback or suggestions
  • reports on customer service benchmarks and targets
  • website statistics and traffic.

Example of using customer research

If your research shows that your customers are looking for an affordable, family-friendly restaurant, your business could cater to that need. Marketing is about working out what problems your business or product can help solve.

You can collect data on your competitors through:

  • observing their advertisements and sales
  • observing businesses in your industry and area through trade magazines, general advertising or site visits
  • networking
  • the internet, including websites, blogs and other social media.

You can use this competitor data in your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis when you develop your marketing plan.

Analysing your competitors can also help you understand where your business or products fit in the marketplace.

Questions to ask when researching your competitors

Consider the following:

  • Who are your competitors?
  • What do they offer their customers?
  • Where are they located?
  • What marketing strategies do they use?
  • How do they communicate with their customers?
  • Do they have an online or social media presence?

Identify your target market

Identify your target market

Identifying and understanding your customers is an essential part of your business and marketing plan. Not everyone is your potential buyer, so it’s important to have a clear understanding of your target market early on. Learn how to analyse your market and define your customer segments.

A target market is a group of potential customers that you identify to sell products or services to. Each group can be divided into smaller segments. Segments are typically grouped by age, location, income and lifestyle. Once you’ve defined your target audience, you’ll find it easier to determine where and how to market your business.

For your business to thrive you need to know who your customer is. Knowing your customers will help you to target customers who are willing to pay for your product or service. This is a much more effective and affordable way to reach your customers and generate business. You’ll be wasting resources if you aim too broadly, or find out too late that there aren’t enough customers for your product or service.

By understanding your market you can promote your product or service more effectively to the right customer group. You will know:

  • where they are
  • which media channels they use
  • what their buying habits are
  • how to tailor your marketing to motivate them to buy your product or service.

To define your target market effectively you’ll need to do some research. Gathering statistics and other market research data helps you to understand your potential customers and their needs and make better marketing decisions.

Find out how to research your market.

 
RESEARCH YOUR MARKET

Work out if your market is large enough and accessible. Then segment the market into groups of buyers with similar preferences and buying habits. For example, the athletic shoe industry is broken up into several segmented groups – first by gender, then by the activity or sport.

Once you’ve identified your market segments, you can define your ideal customer for each segment.

To define your target customers, ask yourself the following questions:

Who your customers are

  • Are your target customers male or female?
  • How old are they?
  • Where do they live?
  • What is their marital status?
  • Do they have children?
  • How old are their children?
  • What is their education level?
  • What do they do for a living?
  • What is their average income?

Customer interests and buying habits

  • What motivates a customer to make a purchase?
  • What are your customers’ common interests?
  • Who makes the buying decisions?
  • How often do they purchase a product?
  • Do they shop online or prefer to see their product before they buy?
  • How long does it take them to make a buying decision?
  • What form of media does your target rely on for information?
  • How far do they travel to make a purchase?
  • What other products do they buy?

Then target your marketing efforts to explain how your product and service will fit into their lifestyle and how it best meets their needs.

Business marketing

Business marketing

There are many definitions of marketing. Broadly, it involves activities that help to build your brand and business. It’s about identifying and understanding your customers, and developing products and services that meet their needs. Marketing requires careful planning and research – but investing time and money now will pay off in the long term.

Marketing is more than just advertising and logos, it can be across many areas of your business, including:

  • how your customers are greeted on the phone
  • your customer service procedures
  • what your staff wear
  • your email signature.

Good marketing tells a story about your business and gives your customers a reason to purchase from you instead of your competitors. It helps you to look at everything in your business that could affect how your customers identify you.

Writing a marketing plan can help you define certain aspects of your business and focus on your priorities.

Learn how to write a marketing plan.

 
DEVELOP YOUR MARKETING PLAN

When marketing your business, products or services, make sure you’re aware of any regulations or legal requirements including the ones we’ve listed below.

  • Advertising your business
  • Running competitions, lotteries or promotions
  • Direct marketing
  • Telemarketing
  • Privacy
  • Using intellectual property
  • Trade mark laws
  • International regulations
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