If you own a company that makes any sort of products, then you already know the importance of having a good marketing plan. Without marketing and advertising, you won’t sell any of your products – because the consumer doesn’t know anything about them. Sure, you might get a few sales from curious buyers who see your items sitting on a shelf at your local store, but that isn’t enough to sustain your company. Instead, you need to put together a proper marketing plan – one that targets your desired market and covers all of the virtual bases.
Guidelines for a Marketing Plan
The first steps to putting together a marketing plan require you to answer some questions. For example, what does your company sell? What makes your products special? And finally, who buys your products? These will help you determine your customer niche – your target market. Without this information, you won’t know who to aim your advertising at. Since advertising budgets are limited, you need to plan out this step carefully.
Let’s go over an example. In this scenario, your company makes toys. Your target market obviously consists of kids – and their parents. You need to get the kids to want your toys so that they pester their parents into buying them. Questions to ask here are: what type of toys do you make? Are they for boys or girls or both? What makes them special? Are they old-fashioned and made of wood? Or are they high tech and plastic? What’s the age range that they’re designed for? How can you get parents to purchase them? All of these are legitimate questions that you’ll need to ask when coming up with your marketing plan. These very specifics determine everything from this point forward. Without a solid plan, your marketing efforts will fall flat. You need to have an answer to every question, even if you aren’t sure at first. This is why you need to do some research to see who buys your products and why they pick them up. You may have to do some consumer focus groups or brainstorming sessions in order to get the answers that you need. Don’t be afraid to reach out before moving on to the next step.
Filling In the Details
After you’ve determined who your target market is, it’s time to start filling in the details. This starts with a new logo. Why do you want a new logo? Businesses upgrade their logos all of the time. Sometimes it’s done to modernize their existing logo, while others, it’s done as part of a rebranding or upgrade. Either way, a new logo gives you something to send out press releases on – which will give you some of the publicity that you need. Your logo needs to reflect what your business does, which types of products it makes. With that said, since you’re rebranding, you don’t want to go too far from the existing logo. You don’t want it to seem like it’s a completely new company unless you’re trying to recover from a scandal. Instead, find some elements of your existing logo that you like and make them work in your new one. For example, you can change your font style but keep the colors. Or change the colors, but keep the overall font and feel. This process can be as simple or complicated as you like. Just keep in mind that your new logo will be featured on everything – your product packaging, your business cards, and your website.
Speaking of your website, it should be updated and overhauled at the same time as your logo. You want your new logo on it, and if you changed the font or colors in that logo, you could do the same on your business’ website. This will really make it seem like your business is starting over, fresh. You don’t want to change your URL though since your customers are used to accessing your website from the same one. This is too big of a change, and it will be tricky to redirect them to it.
Putting the Plan In Motion
Once your website is updated and features your new logo, it’s time to put that marketing plan into motion. You can handle marketing through several different channels – online ads, traditional ads, social media, or even through consumer testing or blog review programs. An example of the latter puts your product into the hands of people who do reviews on their blogs or do things like sending out tweets or other social media posts. This helps spread the word about your product, and all that you needed to do is send them one single item or a coupon.
Other marketing efforts that were already mentioned – online and traditional methods vary depending on your product. Things like television commercials, billboards, and even print ads in newspaper or magazines tend to be very successful. It all depends on who your target market consists of. Some groups are better reached through digital means and social media. And speaking of social media, if you can get your product in the hands of a few influencers, you’ll see your products flying off the shelves. Which influencers you choose, again, depends on your target market. That’s why the first few steps of this plan were to very important.
Conclusion
A good marketing plan for your products depends on many factors, the most important of which is your target market. You need that niche since your entire marketing plan revolves around it. You need to know who’s buying your products in order to determine how to reach them. Without this information, all of your efforts will fall flat. It’s impossible to market a product to absolutely everybody. There isn’t one single thing that everyone on earth buys. With that in mind, as well as a new logo and a redesigned website, you’ll be in good shape. These things will help sell your product, once your advertising and marketing efforts kick in.