Enterprise Nation

Fay Judson and Karen McNulty from MarketingPlanWiz are getting us in the mood for planning for next year. ‘Start in January with a fresh look at the year ahead’ they say, and they offer pointers to consider when updating/creating your marketing plan.

What are you trying to achieve?

We know you know, but this is the best starting point!  Decide now what your business goals are for marketing in the year ahead.  If you're part-way through a financial year, re-visit them.  Objectives usually include things like:

• Increasing sales by x amount
• Increasing market share (usually by a percentage)
• Increasing profit
• Raised awareness
• Entering new markets (new types of customer)

Where are you now?

An essential section of any plan, you need to establish exactly which set of circumstances apply to you today, so that you've got a starting point for the strategy part of your plan.  This can, quite literally, be jotted down in note form so you can include it in a formal plan later.  Things to ask yourself or your team include:

• What are you currently selling?
• Who (customers) do you target at the moment?
• Who are your competitors today?
• How do you sell your products or services at the moment (e.g. shop, via internet, catalogue, face to face and so on).  Try and think about it separately from how you "market" your products as this bit is about the logistics of how you get your products or services to the buyer, rather than how you make them aware of you.
• What are your current prices?
• How do you promote your business, products and services at the moment?  This is the marketing bit, so think about whether you advertise, send out literature and any marketing you do on the Internet too.

Although that sounds like hard work, it really helps to set the scene before you launch into what you think you should do next.  For each of the questions that you answered above, ask yourself or your team what's working and what's not. Make a note of that for the next stage.

The Plan

The next stage is the real planning.  What are you going to commit to doing to achieve those objectives (your strategy) and how will you measure it?  Now there's a whole other subject for next time...

But before you get started in January, best wishes for the Christmas Season and for a prosperous 2010!

Karen McNulty and Fay Judson, MarketingPlanWiz