Before, the businessman prayed to the production saint because there was little or no competition and he easily sold what he produced. Then came the competitors and began to pray to the commercial saint, which meant to sign extraordinary sellers. But today the market is much more complex, “so it is no longer enough to pray to those little saints.
Strategic Base
It derives from the essential part of the mission and vision of your organization. These, along with the organizational objectives are not decorative, but elements that guide and direct the philosophy that the company has about how it does things and where it moves.
Considering the above as a reference, you must include in your marketing plan its three main objectives, which should be strategic (for example: growth, sales or brand development) and quantifiable (with defined time periods and that involve a challenge but without being unattainable). This section should define how the plan focuses exactly on meeting the primary needs of the organization.
Sweet Spot (Or Optimal Point)
To delimit competition environments, you have to take into account your brand, your competence and your category. The first thing you should do is understand the category and predict its evolution based on its past development, who the players are and where your brand is located in that environment. This analysis will yield:
Parity points: aspects in which your brand is equal to those of the competition and therefore cannot compete.
Neutral point: aspects in which the category, the competition and your brand coincide.
Sweet spot: aspects that the category needs, that your brand can satisfy and that the competition does not have.
Once you have found the optimal point, it will guide your entire marketing plan to shore up those advantages. “Small companies have to focus very clearly on the sweet spot; if they go to the neutral point, nothing will happen..
Four Ps
It establishes objectives that will contribute to the development of the brand in the key elements known as Cuatro Ps: product, price, advertising and point of sale.
Each must be broken down into the activities that will lead you to reach that goal, regardless of whether it is price, product, distribution or communication modifications. In other words, you must have your own plan to achieve, with defined dates and budgets. That’s why the marketing plan is considered a very tactical
Document, whose elaboration comes to take large companies up to a month and a half,.
There is no formula regarding how much budget you should allocate to the marketing of your business; the answer depends on factors such as category, type of product, type of market and the life stage of your brand.
To keep track of the progress of the results, it is necessary to make a frequent analysis of the indicators that you have defined. Take into account that when it comes to competing with advertising and intensive promotion -something particularly common in dynamic categories-, you need market research, communication monitoring and brand monitoring to know if your messages are being captured.
