Basics of Marketing

Written by Avi | 01 January 2011

Planning

Your marketing success will generally be relative to your planning effort. A clear plan that gets delivered offers some key benefits to a business.

• Budgetary Control
• Clarity of Purpose (Strategy)
• Consistent Delivery (Tactics)
• Evaluation and Measurement

Budgets

There are many different views on how to set your marketing budget we tend towards the view that it should be the amount of money you need to spend to achieve the business objectives. If you can't afford to spend the required amount you may either have to adjust your objects or adjust your investment.

Audience

You must define who you are talking to. Not only does it make a huge difference to what you tell them but it also makes a huge difference to the channels you use to reach them.

Message

Your product or service must be communicated to your audience and you need to work out what you should be telling them. Cheapest? Fastest? Coolest? If you get this right you have a much better chance of turning your audience into buyers.

Channels

How will you reach your audience to give them your message? Choosing the most effective communication channel has a massive impact not only on your chances of success but also the cost of your campaign.

Tactics

Once you have these factors sorted you can start building a tactical plan. One of the major challenges for businesses is generating a good spread of activities across different disciplines (promotions, pr, direct mail, advertising, events) on a limited budget. This challenge is best solved through careful planning and realistically there are often compromises that need to be made.

Execution

Only once all these things are in place should you be worrying about how they look or how to deliver them. Company cupboards are full of gorgeous brochures that never saw the light of day because nobody considered how they were to be distributed.

Evaluation

This should happen quarterly, ideally. The process should be simply a case of running through your plan and considering what's been achieved against the standard criteria of time and cost and results. Adjustments can and should be made according to these results.

Getting External Support

A marketing agency can assist your business with input on all the areas above and implement your tactical plan as well. A marketing agency has access to all the creative services you might require, Designers, Printers, Photographers, Stand Builders, etc

Spiritas Marketing Agency offer a free review and Outline Marketing plan service.