Before you could even think of sending your color business cards for example to your printer, it should be emphasized that you first need to have a marketing plan. A marketing plan not only tells you where to put all your ideas down, it also gives you a clear direction of where you would want your marketing efforts to go for the whole year.’

First of all, you have to bear in mind that your marketing plan should be clear, easily understood by anyone who happens to look at your plan, and should be direct to the point. It should be able to give a good view of what your company is all about as well as what you do exactly.

So here are the key elements you need to know for your marketing plan before you go out, print and propagate your advertising tool such as your color business cards. Let’s start from the very beginning…

The first thing you need to do is to identify what you would want to write about. Your marketing plan should have these information: latest financial reports; latest sales figures by product and region (better to have the present year and the past 3 years available); a list of all your products and services; a list of your target market; your organizational chart; your marketplace; as well as suggestions from your salespeople and customer-relations officers. Having all these information on hand will make it easier for you later on to outline and write your plan without having to interrupt your exercise just because you have to look for that particular detail first.

And then we go to the “Market Situation” section. This part contains the description of the current situation of your marketplace. Hence, it should be based on clear and straight description and not based on hunches and wild guesses.

Then there’s the “Threats and Opportunities” section. This here is an addition to your market situation where you could cite the pros and cons of having the market trend in place.

Then you have the “Marketing Objectives”. This is where you describe a picture of what lies ahead for your business. What do you want to achieve for this year? What goals would you like to set? This is also where you not only narrate it in words; this is also the part where you provide a quantifiable objective that you can aim for. This is so you can easily see in numbers whether you’ve been successful or not.

Then there’s the “Budget” and “Control” that establishes your costs and the funds allocated for it, as well as the process by which you track down the effectiveness of your plan.

Finally, you have the “Executive Summary”, where you sum up what you have written down in your marketing plan. In contrast, this summary should be located at the front and should be no more than a page. If possible, outline and use bullet points to emphasize the major points in your marketing plan.


For more information, you can visit this page on http://www.printplace.com/printing/color-business-cards.aspx

Tags: pros and cons, marketplace, marketing plan, marketing efforts, elements, target market, 3 years, marketing objectives, customer relations, salespeople, exercise, market situation, color business cards, current situation, hunches, market trend