How long is your marketing vision? The past 5-6 years have been hard to forecast any kind of vision because the business environment has been so unstable. Yet it is the job of marketing to plan ahead with methods that lead to sales. That vision is typically ahead of today by 6-12 months. Yet, many are marketing from one day to the next. The idea that strikes the boss today or what the competition was promoting yesterday becomes the marketing du jour.

Let me make a case for having a long marketing vision spelled out in a plan. In any aspect of business, having a plan is a good idea and marketing is key to helping your business stay alive. What should you include in a marketing plan? Let me walk you through a few integral components of marketing plans.

Goals

Have you ever tried to go on vacation with absolutely no idea where you were going? While that might make for an interesting road trip, my guess is it is not how you typically decide where you will spend a week away. The same is true of marketing plans. Having a goal – usually spelled out in a sales figure or an increase in customers – is very important to being able to write a marketing plan. Make sure your goals are specific, measurable and reasonable. Goals like "we want to increase sales” are not specific enough. State a number with that sales goal. Goals like "we want happy customers” are not really measurable. How will you know when they are happy, unhappy or indifferent towards you? Goals like "we want to achieve world peace through the sale of our products” are not reasonable. Goals don’t need to be complicated, in fact simply stated goals are the best. Marketing plans define the method you are going to use to achieve your goals. Without a goal, you will find your marketing is really leading to nowhere in particular and your business results will reflect that sort of aimless wandering.

Know who you are targeting

It is really important to know who should be your customer and who should not. Wait a minute! Shouldn’t the world be our customer? Unless you are selling life essentials like air and water, no, everyone is not in your target market. What are you selling? Who needs what you sell? Who is likely to buy it? Determine the demographics and the market segments that make up your target market and focus on their needs and desires. What would attract them to your product or service? What would cause them to buy from you over a competitor? Are there sub-market factors you need to consider in getting them to a point of sale? These are key questions for determining who your true target. For instance, if you are selling giant rubber balls, your target market would include elementary aged children, particularly boys age 7-12. You might put a display of your rubber balls in the toy section of a big box store so they are eye level with the typical seven year old boy. You want that kid to pick up your ball and to bounce it in the aisles. You want him to be begging his mother for the ball. You’ve sold the kid, but you also have to sell his mother who hold the cash. What do you need to understand to be able to get her to buy the ball? She will be concerned about two things: price and safety. You need to price it within the budget of a family with young children and make sure there are no concerns regarding the safety of your rubber balls. This is all a part of defining your customer and the sub-market factors that impact buying. All of this needs to be factored into your marketing plans.

Evaluate and adjust

If you are measuring the success or failure of your marketing plans, you need to also be able to adjust the plan as you go. We build quarterly measurement meetings into our plans to make sure we are on the right track. Keep an eye on how close you are getting to your goals. If you are moving closer to achieving them, keep doing what you are doing. If not, make an adjustment. Good marketing plans help you think through what you will do in case something does not go well. Rather than scrap a plan, it is always better to adjust it. Find out the point that you are not making a connection with the customer. Maybe your pricing is too high. Maybe you are not delivering what you said you would to the satisfaction of the customer. Quite possibly you are not making a clear and concise offer with an action step that makes it easy for the customer to buy from you. This involves talking to your customers. Find out what they really think. Give them the opportunity to communicate back to you. This information is invaluable. Use it to adjust your plans.

If you want to be successful in business, you need a sound marketing plan. It will help you get where you want to be. It will also help you understand the obstacles in your way and find a way around them. Otherwise you will end up wanting for more work with no idea how to find it. That need not be with a little planning and forethought.