What’s is a Successful Marketing Plan?
A Marketing/ Sales Plan is not a doctoral thesis or a piece of expository writing. It is a plan – a Marketing Plan. Ultimately its purpose is to guide important decisions. When people talk about a “professional” or “appropriate” format for a Winning Marketing Plan, they actually mean a format that makes the content easy to read and follow. There is no standard format for any effective Marketing/Sales Plan. You can use any text, size, font, page size, and page layout that work.
Are you writing your Killer Marketing Plan for investors? Are you looking to expand? Are you looking to buy a business? There are many reasons for writing a successful Marketing/Sales Plan and the topic outline and corresponding text, tables, and charts should target specifics to match the purpose.
Investors have a legitimate concern about the success of your business. They are risking their money, and expect a reasonable return. The Marketing/Sales Plan should show an accurate understanding of the target market and a well thought out strategy for communicating within the targeted market and motivating potential clients to purchase of the company’s products and services.
A stunning Marketing/Sales Plan provides direction for all your marketing activities. The Marketing/ Sales Plan details what you want to accomplish with your marketing strategy and helps to meet your objectives.
MARKETING PLAN WRITING.
Marketing/Sales Plan Writing should be clear, concise, and easy to read. Short sentences are better than long boring ones. A one-page memo is usually better than a 10 page memo. Here are some suggestions when writing your Killer Marketing Plan:
- Proofread and edit your work. Even better, have someone else, who didn’t write it read it. Check your spelling. Even if you don’t care about spelling others do.
- Be concise. Make your point and move on.
- Do not use phrases such as “I feel”, “I think”, “I believe” etc.
- Avoid unnecessary words such as “really” and “very” that don’t add value.
- Use bullet points but within text, not in headlines.
When a Marketing/Sales Plan is part of new financing, either debt financing or new investment, the process frequently involves a streamlined presentation. Investors expect it. Like a Marketing Plan a Marketing/Sales plan presentation is a specialized tool. Most of these presentations need to summarize an entire Marketing/Sales Plan in a streamlined 7-20 pages (slides) for a talk to last about 30 minutes.
- Use graphics to illustrate main points. The slide displays the chart only, so the presentation fills in the details.
- Use bullet points and key phrases only. They are reminders and placeholders, not complete thoughts.
- A Marketing/Sales Plan is all summary.
- Charts tell most of the story. This kind of optimized tool isn’t done automatically by computer software and particularly not by Marketing/Sales Plan software. The format is different, the purpose is different, and so the tool itself must also be different. There’s no way a Marketing/Sales Plan document can automatically create a PowerPoint presentation without ending up with a poor presentation, too much text, too many numbers, and not enough summary.
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