Resources for Strategic Marketing Planning Consultants

Advisers and consultants providing strategic marketing planning services.
Newspaper Advertising

Companies that specialize in buying and selling newspaper advertisments. more »

Food and Beverage Advertising and Marketing

Offering advertising and marketing services for food and beverage businesses. more »

Agriculture Advertising and Marketing

Offering advertising and marketing services for a griculture businesses. more »

Magazine Advertising

Companies that specialize in magazine and print advertising. Vendors offering access to classified and display advertising. more »

Human Resources Advertising and Marketing

Offering advertising and marketing services for human resources businesses. more »

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Advertising Jobs

Information on employment in the advertising industry. more »

Chief Outsiders Strategic Marketing Consulting Firm

Chief Outsiders is unique among strategic marketing consulting firms. We provide outsourced and interim CMO services in the U.S. with implementation.

http://www.chiefoutsiders.com
Stealing Share

Stealing Share is a brand company focused on stealing market share for its clients by providing them with brand strategies to beat their competition.

http://www.stealingshare.com

Writing a Marketing Plan


If you need to increase your sales and are a loss at what to do, you may want to consider spending the time to write a marketing plan. A marketing plan is a detailed outline of your product’s marketing strategy, along with the foundation and reasoning for this strategy and specific actions you plan to take to meet your marketing goals. Marketers and entrepreneurs write marketing plans because it gives them a chance to outline and research the important details surrounding their business, products, and customers. Marketing plans can follow many different formats, but generally your marketing plan should: 1. Describe your current situation.

2. Describe where you want to be.

3. Describe how you will get there.

Describe the current situation

To get started on your marketing plan, you need to analyze your products or services, your distribution network, and your competitors. You will also want to look at the current financial situation for the products and the results of any previous marketing efforts. Some find it helpful to perform a SWOT analysis in this section of their marketing plan. A SWOT analysis charts out a company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Research and analyze your market

Good market research will create a strong foundation for your marketing plan. While there can be a lot of "trial and error" in marketing, it is always important to make educated decisions. Market research will help you do this. Analyze your target market and break it into segments. Next, research the demographics of the segments you will target. For consumers, include the gender, marital status, age range, education, level, etc. If you are targeting a business, include the company size, job titles of decision makers and annual revenues of the businesses you want to target. You will also want to research the market needs, trends, and growth as part of your market research.
Census Bureau to find demographics for my target market. The US Department of Commerce also has a helpful market research seach tool.

Describe where you want to be

Next, you'll want to list some objectives for your marketing efforts. These objectives generally fall into two categories: Marketing Objectives and Financial Objectives. Financial objectives focus on the profits that will result from your marketing strategy. "Earn $500,000 in profits" would be a financial objective. Marketing objectives tend to be more abstract than financial objectives. A marketing objective may be to improve customer retention.

Describe how you will get there

Finally, you're ready to develop the meat of your marketing plan. In this section you'll want to be specific on what you will do to achieve your objectives and who is responsible for accomplishing them. You will also want to include sales forecasts and a marketing budget for your products.