Strategic Marketing Plans

It's more than a marketing plan. . . it's your company's future.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, almost half of all new businesses fail after just four years. The Small Business Administration reports that 40,000 corporations went bankrupt last year. Those figures don't include the thousands of sole proprietorships and partnerships that also closed their doors every year.

While writing a marketing plan doesn't guarantee success, the absence of one certainly accelerates an organization's journey towards failure.

Unfortunately, today's popular business literature has created the impression that a marketing plan simply requires some software, a word processor, and the ability to fill in the blanks. That misconception can be fatally dangerous to the health of your business.

Many "do-it-yourself" marketing plans are nothing more than good intentions combined with wishful thinking. The marketing strategies -- if there are any -- can be flawed and the plan's "numbers" are vague guesstimates. We would never try crossing the ocean in such a flimsy vessel, yet many business owners and managers risk their life savings and futures on a boat that's sinking even before it leaves port.

Our comprehensive, disciplined approach -- combined with 25 years of marketing experience and strategic insights -- gives you a real plan, one that you can rely on to guide your business into the future.

A comprehensive, disciplined approach.

Our approach to strategic marketing planning is based on proven marketing principles and real-world business experience.

We use a comprehensive, ten-step process to guide development of your plan. Each step is structurally tied to the next and logically follows from what came before. It is a sequential, interlocking decision and action process. To each step we add our unique creative and strategic insights.

When your plan is complete, you will have a detailed road map to success, based on rigorous market analysis, with specific, quantified goals and activities. In other words, you will know where your business is going, how to get there, and what to expect when you arrive.

Our approach vastly increases the likelihood of success for your product or service.

The strategic planning process.

Our plans consist of logical, interlocking steps. The steps build on each other, both strategically and quantitatively.

Step 1: Business review
Business scope options, in-depth product and market review, target market profiles and behavioral analysis.

Step 2: Problems and opportunities
Summary points describing the challenges that emerge from the business review and which serve as the basis of the marketing plan.

Step 3: Sales objectives
Projected sales levels - everything else in the plan is driven by these quantified goals.

Step 4: Target markets and marketing objectives
Defining and profiling the groups that will fulfill your sales objectives. Marketing objectives are established for each target market detailing the desired market behaviors.

Step 5: Positioning and marketing strategies
Brand positioning analysis and strategy, marketing strategies (competition, spending, product, distribution, advertising, etc.)

Step 6: Communications goals
Quantified target market awareness and attitudinal goals required to meet your marketing objectives.

Step 7: Tactical marketing mix tools
Action plans that achieve your marketing objectives and strategies. Each tool (product, pricing, advertising, promotion, etc.) has its own objectives and strategies.

Step 8: Budget, payback analysis, & calendar
The cost of implementing your plan, the plan's projected revenues v. expenses, and the schedule of tactical activities.

Step 9: Marketing plan execution*
Implementing the plan in the marketplace.

Step 10: Evaluation*
The level of success achieved by the overall plan and its individual elements.

* Many clients implement steps 9 and 10 using internal resources; however, Apex Marketing can provide tactical marketing support as needed.

Take the next step.

For a no-obligation discussion of how our comprehensive, disciplined approach to marketing planning can help your organization, e-mail Sudhir at sudhir@apex-mg.com