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Marketing planning is centered on consumer demand, which can help enterprises improve their management level, efficiently allocate their limited resources, reduce uncertainty in the future, improve market competitiveness, and enhance profitability. What makes a successful marketing plan?The author of this article has analyzed this, so let's take a look.
For a rookie who wants to learn marketing planning, it is most practical to have a practical way to complete a plan independently and completely on the basis of a very simple methodology.
As a newcomer, the first thing to understand is what is planned
Planning is based on an analysis of the market situation and the effective use of corporate resources, and the pre-design of marketing plans and specific strategies to achieve the desired values.
To understand what the project does:
Marketing planning is centered on consumer demand, which can help enterprises improve their management level, efficiently allocate their limited resources, reduce uncertainty in the future, improve market competitiveness, and enhance profitability.
To understand the logic between several common concepts:
To understand the principles on which the plan is based:
1) Humanistic principle.
It is necessary to be consumer-centric, closely connect corporate behavior and consumers, and the marketing plan cannot be designed in isolation from the internal personnel of the enterprise and the target customers outside the enterprise, otherwise it will cause the planning activities to be fruitless.
2) The principle of difference.
In the planning process, it is necessary to assess the situation, use dynamic concepts to start from the objective market environment, consumers and other specific conditions, and design and formulate marketing plans according to the situation. There is no fixed model for marketing planning, and it is not possible to carve a boat and seek a sword. For beginners, the process of imitation learning is unavoidable, but the real actual combat cannot stay at the level of imitation, it is necessary to be creative and able to win by surprise.
3) The principle of integration.
Marketing planning should focus on the theme of the plan, unify all aspects involved in the plan, and produce a whole.
4) The principle of efficiency.
When planning a marketing plan, it is important to pay attention to the return on investment, not to plan for the sake of planning, but to grasp the most fundamental things. (What is the profit that can be brought to the company by the planning activities?)
To find out what competencies you need:
1) Good at observing, experiencing, and going deep into life.
Real life is the end of creativity. In daily life, develop the habit of observing, experiencing and going deep into life, through a look at the store, two look at the advertisement, three look at the symbol, four look at the packaging, five look at the label, you can effectively understand the market information and grasp the market trend, on this basis, the creative plan conceived can solve the pain points of consumers, closely follow the actual needs of consumers, and meet the desires of consumers.
2) Develop a wide range of interests.
Interest is very important for the generation and expansion of creative thinking, and at the same time, a wide range of interests can also allow you to gain more social practice and life experience, and cultivating interest is also conducive to improving your aesthetic ability and appreciation level.
3) Reserve and accumulate knowledge.
Logical judgment and reasoning are the most common ways of thinking when planning a plan. If there is no theoretical knowledge as a foundation, it is difficult to make rational and logical judgments on some more complex issues.
To this end, in daily life, it is necessary to increase the extensive involvement and accumulation of knowledge, in addition to learning marketing-related knowledge, but also to understand the knowledge in other fields. Only by doing a good job of knowledge accumulation and accumulation can you be able to be comfortable in the process of planning and planning, and prevent blindness.
Now that you know what a plan is, you can refer to the planning process at the bottom of the article and my other article "How to Do Market Insight" and "What is Marketing", and try to make a draft plan while reading.
1. Insight into the market.
Marketing planning must start with insight into the market, and this step is crucial to the quality of the entire marketing plan.
There are two variables that any business faces:
One is the variables that the company does not directly control, and they exist in the form of markets (crowds) and competition (competitors).
The second is the variable that the enterprise can completely control, that is, the internal operation of the enterprise. (self).
As a result, we can collect and analyze data from the three dimensions of [competition, crowd, and self] to gain insight into the market, and finally form an industry insight report.
1.Competition: We mainly analyze three points [industrial chain, industry, and competitor products].
First of all, expand from the industry to the upper and lower assembly industry, and think about the value of the industry from the perspective of the industrial chain. It is recommended to start with the industry map. Secondly, we must have an overall understanding of the industry. It is advisable to familiarize yourself with the industry through leading companies. Focus on the big players in the industry, such as the top 1 to top 10 companies in the industry. 2.Crowd: We mainly analyze three points [crowd portrait, scene, task, pain points, and benefits].
3.We mainly analyze two points [qualitative and quantitative] of the enterprise itself
The operation of an enterprise is to use the existing resources and core endowments, and design a set of matching business actions to gain an advantage in the market competition.
According to the actual financial data of the company, managers can understand the business operation of the enterprise and make better decisions.
Note: The information of financial data is lagging behind, and day-to-day management needs to focus on those key financial indicators.
Suggestion: When conducting enterprise analysis, let the company's finance take out the financial bills and use the actual financial data (quantitative) to analyze the company's business operation (qualitative).
2. Set goals.
Once you've completed the market insights, the next step is to determine what you want to expect based on the market insights. For example, the market share of a certain product of an enterprise reaches 10% within one year.
It should be clear that the marketing objectives are only related to the product and the market, and only by lending individual things to individual people in order to achieve the company's financial goals.
Pricing, advertising, etc., are only means of success, so pricing goals, ** goals, advertising goals, and other similar goals should not be confused with marketing goals.
3. Develop a strategy.
Marketing objectives tell you where you're going, and marketing strategies paint a complete picture of how you'll get there.
1.Market segmentation.
Note: Select the market segment with a good downward trend from the overall market (the premise is that the scale is large and can be entered).
Market segmentation is the definition of consumer groups with the same needs and desires into smaller market segments.
It can be used as a single variable or a combination of multiple variables in one of the four variables [Population, Geography, Psychology, and Behavior]. Commonly used are behavioral variables (use scenario task to be completed) for market segmentation, for example: 36 years old, female, Guangzhou, likes to skate (the ostensible demand is to skate, and the implicit is the motivation to show others that he is an athlete).
Once you've defined multiple market segments, evaluate those segments:
After evaluating several defined market segments, let's take a look at the forms you plan to take to enter this segment:
Note: If some data on the evaluation of the market segment is difficult to obtain, you can conduct expert interviews or judge based on your own subjective experience.
2.Brand strategy.
The product is used to solve the pain points of the crowd and meet the needs of the crowd, and the brand and price are empowered in the product. The brand is like a scarf of a product, in order to distinguish the opponent and accumulate the perennial brand equity value, and the price is an economic transaction.
1) Name. I have high requirements for the name of the brand, which must be met: easy to remember (the words should be simple, borrowing words that have long existed in people's minds), knowing what to do at a glance, and being able to register.
Whether the name is good or not directly determines whether your later communication costs and expenses are high.
2) Logo
There is only one principle for designing symbols: design according to the values you want to promote. (It would be great if people could see what the value was.)
3) Color. Color will form an attraction to people's vision, a symbol is not beautiful, not only shape, color is also important.
4) Endorsement. Endorsement is an external force that can be borrowed behind the product to strengthen its own fame and reduce the goodwill of consumers, so it is very important to use endorsement well.
5) Stories. People are emotional animals, and writing a good brand story and conveying the emotional value of the brand will gain the recognition of consumers, which will play a certain role in the later stage of community marketing and customer loyalty.
6) Reason for ordering (brand positioning).
Why do consumers want to buy your products instead of other people's products, and what value does your brand bring to consumers, you have to think clearly, and you must also make it clear, and the previous series of business actions should also support this value.
3.Products. My understanding of the product is that the product is the value provided for the market segment, the solution to the pain points of the crowd, and the need to meet the needs of the crowd.
Selling (designing) products once, you have to understand a few incentives:
1) What levels does a complete product contain?
The easiest thing to see in our daily life is the physical product, its name, logo, packaging design, etc. I have seen many companies and stores selling products just for the sake of selling products, but they have not thought about what problems their products solve for customers, what value they provide to customers, and why customers choose their products.
If you haven't even thought about this question, then how can you effectively develop customers, and you won't find the root cause of customer churn.
2) The structure of the product What is the product line. (a range of products and services).
3) What are the roles of each product?What are the tasks?
4) The strategic sequence of each product launch.
4.Price. The price sets the world, and this sentence can show the importance of the price. The price is the empowerment of the product, and it is formulated according to the role and task of each product in the product structure.
We often say that there is no product that cannot be sold, as long as your price is low enough. And there is a cost to the product, so there is a limit to the formulation of the price, that is, it cannot be higher than the cost of the price, which is for the enterprise. For consumers, the value of your product is also capped, if you have an apple, the most expensive consumer perception is 30 yuan a catty, and you sell it at a price of 55 yuan a catty, it will definitely not be easy to sell. Therefore, the pricing is based on the cost of the product as the bottom line, the value perception of consumers as the upper limit, and the appropriate pricing method is used in this range to formulate.
Note: Gross profit margin will reduce the cash flow of the enterprise, and the cost of the enterprise should be paid, and the gross profit margin is crucial.
5.Channels + Communication.
With the product and the price of the product, you need to let others know your product, know your brand positioning, and have a place for consumers to buy.
Later, e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and Jingdong appeared, and at the same time promoted the development of express mail, so that enterprises could not only carry out brand and product promotion (communication) on the platform, but also serve as a transaction carrier (channel), and began to integrate channels and communication. Until the emergence of short ** platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou in recent years, the way of live streaming has been expanded, which has greatly reduced the efficiency of brand and product communication and product sales.
At this point, several concepts emerged:
1) People bring goods.
It is the live broadcast master who has produced differentiated personality characteristics on the platform through the construction of personality, and after a wave of fans and fans, he takes personal IP as the core to sell goods in live broadcasts.
2) Customs declarant.
It is the enterprise to open stores on Tmall, Jingdong and other e-commerce platforms, and sell products with brand value as the core.
3) Traditional e-commerce.
It's talking about platforms like Tmall, Tmall, JD.com, and Pinduoduo.
4) Interest e-commerce (live e-commerce).
It's about Douyin, Kuaishou and other platforms with short ** and live broadcast methods.
Now that you have a basic understanding of the development of channels and communication, you can analyze and draw the entire process of ordering products for consumers in your own industry, see where each link needs channels, where it needs to be disseminated, and according to the needs of each link, the channels and communication will be accurately placed online and offline, which can reduce the cost of the enterprise and improve efficiency.
Fourth, the marketing plan.
Sort out the information collected from the insight into the market and the marketing strategy formulated, and write a marketing plan in the form of PPT or text.
The marketing plan is a written action plan for the marketing activities of the enterprise, which must have a complete structure, clear hierarchy, clear main line, strategic leadership, rich charts, and in-depth analysis. The main contents are:
5. Planning and implementation.
After the approval of the marketing plan, it is necessary to allocate all kinds of resources of the enterprise in accordance with the requirements of the plan, handle all kinds of relationships inside and outside the enterprise, strengthen leadership, improve execution, and implement the content of the plan.
The Gantt chart drawn up according to the action plan of the marketing plan is completed by the main person in charge of each task and different time periods.
6. Assessment and amendment.
When the plan enters the execution stage, it is necessary to continuously evaluate and revise the effectiveness of the plan, which is also what marketing control needs to do in the implementation process. If the actual effect is not satisfactory, we will promptly correct the causes that cause adverse effects so that the expected goals can be achieved.
7. Final Words.
To be honest, even though a whole team like a consulting firm has done all of the above, it cannot be said that the project you have planned is very effective.
I can only help you as much as possible to get started with how to write a marketing plan, as a non-industry insider, I have already tried my best to do the above, and then I can only rely on time to improve myself.
If you don't understand any part of the practice, please leave a message in the comment area, and everyone will explain it together.