A marketing plan is an essential tool in any business. As you design lines of work in all departments, such as production, billing or technical support, the marketing plan is the roadmap with strategies to improve the marketing of your product or service. But do you know how to develop a marketing plan for your technology company? Here are the essential preliminary steps and some tips.
Study the market
Analyze and investigate the sector. Extract economic data, billings, turnover, suppliers ... Know the total number of operating companies offering the same product or service than you, discuss the relevance in different geographical areas, etc.
Technological industry is constantly evolving. You must be always up to date, to know what the market offers and how is it offered.
Analyze the competition
Determine exactly who your direct competition is. Investigate how it works, how to sell, know their strategies are and learn from them. In the online environment it is very easy to follow the steps of a company or business. Take advantage of it and get inspired to improve your actions.
Know yourself
Prepare a corporate profile and differentiate your company. Defining yourself is essential to make yourself known. It is important for your employees, because they must understand that represent the company and they are part of their image; and by your potential customers, to give a clear, well-structured and corporate image objective.
Identify your differences, and expand them through your communication, the message spears abroad.
Determine your Target Audience
The target audience is the group of people who may be more interested in the product or service we offer and, therefore, our potential customers. You must be clear about what is your profile, set marked segments of the population by analyzing the characteristics of the target.
It is important to develop a detailed snapshot of the socio-economic aspects of our target audience. If they are male or female, group of age, place of residence, with whom lives, family’s income, studies, habits, hobbies, concerns, motivations ... The more aspects of their lives you know the better.
We should also establish segmentation by other variables, such as if you have bought or have used our services repeatedly, or their behavior in the online environment: if you share information, repeat visits, average time, bounce rate, content consumption...
It is important to know our customers. If your company does not work with CRM tools that facilitate, a lot, these steps, you should collate information. Collect, review, analyze and segment all the information at your fingertips. Lose time because it's worth.
Set yourself targets
The marketing plan is the ideal tool to organize and develop a roadmap with concrete actions and marked periodicities. It will help you optimize your efforts and be realistic about your time commitment.
Large companies have marketing plans with hundreds of pages. If your company is small, you will suffice a few pages to guide your way. Our advice is to elaborate a plan that is neither for very long-term nor too immediate. One year, as advised many marketers, it may be excessive. For us, in technology companies, quarterly plans are ideal. Why? Because the technology sector is evolving quickly; and it is important to evaluate and measure the actions taken in a plan for repeating the successful ones. In addition you can also develop strategies seasonally.
A marketing plan will help you to get organized. There is a range of tools on the market that will also help you to be more efficient at work. GSuite of Google offers a package of essential Apps.
Define the best strategy
The strategy defines future marketing activities and can be:
Focusing on the product you want to promote, brand image, etc.
Dividing the public according to different variables such as geographic, demographic, behavioral...
It refers to improve the place of our brand in the minds of consumers about competition.
With the intention of retaining our customers. Remember, the best advertising is what makes a satisfied, loyal customer.
Who do you have to share your plan with?
You must share your marketing plan with all the professionals who are part of the company. Getting all the agents involved and get feedback from all departments is essential.
Make all employees feel engaged and share with them the vision of where you want the company to handle. Not everyone understands or wants to analyze financial projections, but if you develop a marketing plan creative and enthusiastic, catch it all.
If your company is very small, you should analyze the marketing plan with different hats, from the point of view of each of the departments in which you are ahead.
This template we offer is the key for you to make a marketing plan tailored to you, covering all your business needs. It is a useful tool that conforms to any business and that surely will help you save time and effort.
