10 Reasons Why You Need A Marketing Plan

by Andrew L. Witherspoon
2/23/2007
If you are in business you need a marketing plan. General reasons for this conclusion are that.

A marketing plan can help you to achieve a unified and practical approach to your business goals.
A marketing plan will help you to identify the key business points you need to develop in order to influence your customers.
A marketing plan should be able to assist you in focusing on what your real marketing budget will look like.
A marketing plan can help you to apply reality based learning to achieve profit.

Ten of the most common and more specific reasons for why you need a marketing plan are as follows.

1. Your targeted customers may not be hearing the message that you are currently sending.
You are always sending a message whether you believe it or not. Silence speaks volumes in respect to what you think about your product or service. Your marketing plan can help you develop your voice and your message. You can join online forums and focus groups to get an idea of the type of message you should be sending based on what your target customers are saying they want to hear.

2. If you aren’t sending you customers the message that they want to hear you can be sure that someone else is.
You may have a better product than your competition but if no one knows about it no one will buy it. A marketing plan will help you devise ways to make your message stand out above the shouting of your competitors messages. Look around to see what your competition is doing and do them one better. Upgrade and upscale your message to be better and louder than theirs.

3. The customer is always right.
Developing a marketing plan will help keep you in the mindset of a customer and not a seller. You have to always try to see from the customers point of view to know what they want in order to know what to pitch and how to pitch it. You should get in the constant habit of surveying your customers and potential customers to see what the current trend is for them. Don’t depend on how you feel about your product or service alone, what matters is what the customer thinks and feels. They are always right generally speaking because they are the hands that feed your business.

4. You need a marketing plan to be able to plan and execute the plan.
Without a plan you are working blindly in the dark. Customer strategy planning takes effort and research that will be reflected in how you put together a working plan of action. Doing business on “the fly” is a rookie mistake that hopefully you will learn from and pull out of if you choose this route. Your business is your life, plan it carefully every step of the way.

5. The more you give the more you get.
A well thought out marketing plan will not only be made to benefit your business but your customers as well. Your plan should intrinsically be set to the customers needs. Remember, you are there to service them and as a byproduct you get paid. If your focus ever shifts from giving to getting your customers will realize this and their loyalty and patronage will shift to your competition.

6. Being better is better than being good.
While you may have a great product and good PR, a well planned, thought out and researched marketing plan that is well implemented will put you in a league of your own. Such a plan will make your business and product soar above the crowd. No longer will your product or business be, okay, it will be fantastic!

7. If you don’t succeed your dead.
The whole purpose of going into to business is to create a symbiotic relationship with your potential customers. You sell what they need and they pay you for it. Simple, right? Not really. There are many factors involved in gearing a product campaign up for marketing. Without out proper planning, that you will get in a marketing plan, you will not have much success. No success means failure and failure means the end of your business or product life.
8. Marketing is structured creativity.
Marketing your product or service will be the most creative part of your business. Attempting to please the maximum amount of consumers to achieve the maximum business benefits takes thinking outside of the box. Not unlike being an artists, a good marketer has to be innovative and cutting edge without giving up structure and planning. A marketing plan can help you be structured but how creative you are with it is up to you. Each campaign you design will be and should be different from the last, even if you are selling the same product or service.

9. Marketing is structured logic.
Viewing a plan on paper or other media gives you the ability to see the structure and the logical flow of what you are attempting. This is a very important if not the most important aspect of why any business should have a marketing plan. Any one can think up a plan of action, but will they see the big picture? If so will the big picture make sense. A marketing plan provides insight into the end result of what you are trying to achieve and may show alternatives and logical links that you may not have foreseen without a plan. No matter how much fun you may have with your business, it still has to be orderly and organized.

10. The world is a market.
Just about everything deals with marketing in one aspect or another. When you apply for a job, your resume is you marketing plan because you are marketing yourself. Your personality is a marketing tool when you are meeting and networking with people. You market your morals and values to everyone in your sphere of influence by showing people what you stand for and who you are. Marketing is a key factor of human interaction. It is part of the rules of the game that you should learn to play well if you intend to survive and reach your goals.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Witherspoon is a freelance writer, an internet entrepreneur and a staff writer for Literafeelya Magazine.
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This article may be reprinted provided that: It is not altered in any way and the author is credited. For related articles and content, visit: Mega Product Marketing And Review or contact the author at andrewwitherspoon@hotmail.com.

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