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Outlining the Marketing Plan 26 August, 2010

Here's an outline for a marketing plan.

Some parts will be longer, others may only be a sentence or even be non-existent.
It's better to avoid 'I', 'we', and 'you', but if you find yourself frustrated or stumbling on these aspects, drop them in favor of smoothness. The meat of the plan and the part that will be of interest to most people will be that of section 'I', which may be the majority of the summary in section 'A'. The rest of the plan is backing, justification, and proof that section 'I' will succeed. Section 'I' explains the actual product, as well as the major assumptions.

A - Executive Summary
    1 - State the product, it’s name, the company name, and who your market is
    2 - Give a brief overview of the whole plan
        a - Summarize assessments
        b - Summarize goals
        c - Summarize recommendations
B - Introduction
C - Customer Analysis
    1 - Customer identification/definition
    2 - Customer demographics, needs assessment, and decision-making
        a - Detail the market vs general target segments
        b - Describe Industry worth
        c - How many potential customers are there?
        d - How is the potential customer base changing?
        e - Explain the target customers’ demographics
        f - Detail the target customers’ psychographics
        g - Detail the target customers’ geographics
        h - Detail the needs of the target customers
        i - Detail the drivers of the customers’ decision-making
        j - What will make consumers choose this product
        k - Are the target market’s decisions influenced by others
        l - What impact will the product have on the target market
        m - How much education & change will need to take place
        n - Detail customers’ price and augmented product’s preferences
        o - Detail service required
    3 - Comprehensive profiles of a company’s target customers
    4 - Detail any partners and partner’s decision making process or show there are none
D - Current marketing Situation Analysis
    1 - Market overview/brief description & the company’s place in the market
    2 - Product line overview
        a - What other products does the company have?
        b - Where does the new product fit into the existing line?
    3 - External Analysis (SLEPT/Partial Porters)
        a - Social (trends & their effects)
        b - Legal (regulations, labor unions)
        c - Economic
            i - supply, demand, equilibrium
            ii - vulnerability to preference changes
            iii - fiscal, monetary, inflation, unemployment
        d - Political (federal, local, favor of political party to industry, political changes)
        e - Technological
            i - evolution, choices available
            ii - technological leads, innovation, can we keep up?
        f - Industry
            i - Show the leader in the market
            ii - Show recent changes in power/trends in competition
        g - Customers
            i - How are demands changing over time?
            ii - Is the company or consumer in power?
        h - Suppliers
            i - Show partners/value adding groups
            ii - Is the company or supplier in power?
        i - New industry entrants
            i - How are the barriers to entry?
            ii - Are there many new entrants?
    4 - Internal Analysis
        a - Resourced based view
        b - Functional view
        c - Value-chain
        d - Competency matrix
        e - Building blocks of competitive advantage
E - SWOT
F - Competitive Analysis
    1 - Define what kinds of competition exist
        a - Substitutes (direct)
        b - In house or other (indirect)
    2 - Describe competitors and show competitive advantage
        a - Define each direct competitor individually
            i - Strengths
            ii - Weaknesses
            iii - How do they satisfy the target market’s needs?
        b - Group and categorize each major competitor
        c - Describe the company’s competitive advantages
            i - Efficiency
            ii - Quality
            iii - Innovation
            iv - Responsiveness to customers
            v - Providing incentives
            vi - Access to limited or exclusive resources
G - Distribution overview
    1 - Describe existing distribution channels and their effectiveness
    2 - Describe trends in sales of similar products
    3 - Overview of if the product will be sold in similar fashion to others
    4 - Ordering
H - Place in the market
    1 - Overview of company strategy
    2 - List goals
    3 - Issues affecting goal accomplishment
I - Marketing Strategy (What do to based on what was already stated/How to do it)
    1 - Value Proposition/Product
        a - Describe the core product
        b - Describe the augmented product
        c - What need will it satisfy
        d - Why will a consumer choose this product?
        e - Evolution of the product/it's successors
    2 - Segmentation
        a - Describe your market and detail how you will segment it
        b - Justify why the market will be segmented in this way
        c - Describe the segmentation variables and the segment’s differences
        d - Describe why other segments are not being targeted
    3 - The Rest of the Marketing mix
        a - Price
            i - Value of new offering
            ii - Difference between new offering and what exists
            iii - Pricing strategy
        b - Place/distribution
            i - Sales plan
            ii - Sales forecast
        c - Promotion
            i - Acquiring customers
            ii - Retaining customers
            iii - Education
            iv - Facts
    4 - Marketing research needed
    5 - Time Lines
J - Action & Control
    1 - Action Program
        a - List the first year’s initiatives
        b - Estimate at what time each will be done in relation to other things
        c - Estimate how long they will take
    2 - Controls
        a - What checkpoints are necessary to make sure everything is on track?
        b - How will changes in the environment be handled?
        c - What will be measured?
K - Conclusion