If you should prepare a marketing plan and you don’t know how to do it properly you can use the following sample marketing plan explaining what the content should contain.
I. Executive Summary
1. The executive summary should cover the entire plan within a few pages.
II. Situational Analysis
A. Product Overview
1. Pay attention to the product and the category.
B. Market Segmentation
- You should define the different target market segments and the place the product takes in it. A price/performance chart may also be included.
C. Product Offering
- You should pay attention to each of the company's products and their correspondence to the needs of their specific target public.
D. Market Size
- You are recommended to combine information from PC Data, IDC, and other analyst sources to define the amount of available and potential buyers in your respective target markets.
E. Market Share
- PC Data and trade magazines may sometimes include the sales figures from each of the competitive products. This data makes you able to define the percentage of the market belonging to you. Visual pie charts can be added to represent the market percentage of each player.
F. Growth Potential
- Analyst information from primary research is necessary for defining of the market trends describing areas of potential growth. Some organizations producing well-documented reports on specific upcoming markets are available.
G. Competitive Environment
- Make a list of your competitors, their positions and current plans. It is recommended to visit their Web site, contact their distributors, analysts, people working with them, their sources, investments and services provided by them to find out about the plans of your competitors.
H. Gaining Market Share
- A tactical plan can increase market share through the development of new products, new markets, or finding new buyers.
I. Positioning
- After a good analyze of the previous information you should decide whether to buy or don’t buy this or that product. You should also include a chart explaining your product's location according to the target market segments.
III. Tactical Marketing Plan
Its purpose is to prepare strategies and make the strategic objectives clear.
A. Organizational Strategies.
- Consolidation Strategies – should demand every existing products to be evaluated whether they can be consolidated as a result of the next methods.
i. Harvesting (it is the phenomenon of company’s reduced support of a product that happens gradually)
ii. Pruning (the support of certain market segments is excluded)
iii. Retrenchment (the same product is offered with more intensity)
iv. Divestment (unsuitable products or products of bad quality are sold off)
- Growth Strategies
i. Market Penetration (provides better entry to existing markets)
ii. Product Development (it depends whether the product is changed or accepted)
iii. Market Development (the development of new markets is observed)
iv. Diversification (new products are introduced)
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