18 Pulling the Plan Together
What I recommend you do first is to go back through the various case histories. Change numbers here and there to see what happens to the overall goals or objectives of each file (you can even save your “trysies” with different names). Play around. Get familiar with each of them. When you feel comfortable with the case study files, open up the software with the files for your data and start inserting some facts or numbers and then complete your objectives and strategies. You can start with any file, but I suggest you follow the book.
On customer analysis (see Chapter 4), what you are looking for is who really makes the buying decision and what turns them on. You don’t start by describing what your product or service does, but what it will do for the prospective buyer. You don’t buy roses for your better half because they are beautiful. You buy them in the hopes that you will get a kiss.
In Chapter 6 (The Product/Service Plan) I gave you the choice of four different mousetraps to trap your customers. Your business needs a personality. A uniqueness. You want to be a Marriott. A Wal-Mart. Not a General Motors, which has a blah personality due to their financial problems and boring advertising.
In Chapter 7 (Caculating Your Marketing Communications Budget), you were provided with worksheets to help you calculate a budget, and in Chapter 8 (Competitive Analysis), the worksheets help you compare your product/service to those of your competitors.
In the chapter on advertising (see Chapter 9), I refer to the creative strategy. This is a critical document because if you do not have one, there will be no continuity in your message to customers. You should have one message for each prospect at the top of the purchase process, whether you are making a sales presentation, staffing a booth at a trade show, or sending some advertising in his or her direction. If you are going after a CEO, engineer, or housewife, each has a different benefit that turns him or her on. Find that benefit and that should be the only message to that particular job description or lifestyle. You also want to calculate your reach and frequency to be sure you have the right weight in your advertising expenditures.
Be sure you take advantage of all the facets of sales promotion (see Chapter 10). Once again, be unique. Bring in a fifteen-foot-tall end-of-aisle display into your retail outlets. Be sure it’s animated. Offer a 25 cent coupon on your $20,000 pieces of equipment. Check to see if the cost of your trade shows, bingo cards, and catalogs are less than the amount of profit they deliver.
Remember, a favorable publicity story on your business is worth several ads (see Chapter 11). If one company can get expansive news coverage on just adding a new department to their store, you can’t cop out by saying you have nothing interesting to write about. And tie-ins with charity have been very successful for several companies.
As I said in Chapter 12, The Sales Plan: Pricing, please do not add up your costs and then add an arbitrary markup. You are not looking at the price that gives you the greatest volume or the greatest unit margin. You want the price that gives you the greatest margin in total dollars.
In determining future sales (see Chapter 13), once again do not use an arbitrary growth percentage. Although this file is quite large, it takes into account all the factors that will determine your future sales and profit. You will need some research here, as you will to get the data you need for some of the other files, but it is information you need if you are going to be a professional planner.
Tell everyone in your company that customer service is not a department, but an attitude (see Chapter 14). Weren’t you impressed when you called a business and a live person answered on the first ring? I don’t care if that receptionist costs that company $100,000 per year; she was more than worth it. Keeping a customer only costs one-fifth as much as acquiring a new one.
The Internet is a whole new ball game, especially social media. If you’re going to use the Internet to get customers—and in today’s world, that’s pretty much of a must!—do so sensibly. Get in touch with some of the websites I mention in Chapter 16, and move cautiously. You may want to hire your own consultant to guide you.
After going through the Excel files inserting your data, the next step is to contact a research company to help you confirm your data and fill in any blanks. Contact a research company that will do a benchmark study (see Chapter 17) for you and show them all the data you inserted into the software files. They will then give you a proposal for a study.
After you complete your research, you should be able to finish inserting your own company data into the software cells for:
2. Experience curve
3. Reach and frequency
4. Trade
5. Pricing
6. Sales forecasting
All this information belongs in your fact book and it supports your objectives and strategies. You also should have completed your objectives and strategies in the Word files for the:
1. Product/service plan
2. Advertising plan
3. Sales promotion plan
4. Public relations plan
5. Sales plan
6. Customer service plan
7. Internet plan
8. Research plan
All of these plans belong in your marketing plan, along with your:
1. Positioning strategy
2. Creative strategy
3. Marketing communications budget
4. Competitive analysis
5. Maximizing the high-potential accounts
In addition, you may want to add some overall objectives and strategies. Your overall objectives could cover factors such as profit and market share and your overall strategies could deal with your company-wide positioning. Worksheet 18–1 follows. You can photocopy it, or print out a copy from your downloaded Worksheets folder.
Worksheet 18–1 Marketing plan: Overall objectives and strategies
Print out copies of all your completed files and you are done. Hooray! Remember to keep self-inspecting and using research to continuously monitor your plan.