5 Basic Questions for an Effective Marketing Plan

You cannot make an important amount of money just moving fingers. You cannot built a profitable business without working many nights.You need hard work, good luck and inspiration, but the truth is you cannot achieve good results without having a plan, because the key to the success in any venture is the effective marketing.

How to succeed in designing a good marketing plan ?

Nothing easier, you need a pencil, a piece of paper and the desire to answer to a certain questions. Be creative and use your imagination to find new ideas regarding particular ways to market your products.

1. What is your goal?
This is the most critical question, because the answer will decide the flow of your future plan. The marketing approach will be different if you want to improve sales of an old product or you want to introduce a new one.

2. Who is your target audience?
Do you intent to address your campaign to everyone or you are targeting a particular group ? If you choose to sell a new product think whether you will involve your old customers or not.

3. What are the main steps your campaign will focus?
Evaluate what are the benefits of your product that you are marketing. Think what benefits will gain your customer by accepting whatever offer you have. Make a list of this benefits, but make it as long as you can. Try to decide why people will trust your product and buy it. They should have some interests to do that. Do not ignore the fact that very often people buy products they want from people they know and trust. Decide if it is necessary to promote your expertise.

4. What are the appropriate ways you can promote this campaign?
Make another list because this is an important question. Try to consider ezines, safelists, banners, articles, newsgroups, message boards, search engines, mail, reports, postcards, press releases, fliers, radio, TV. Are you thinking to use paid or free advertising ?

5. What is your budget?
You may have no budget but you can afford a serious amount as well. Once you will have the answer, you will know if you must do all the work yourself or you can hire an expert. Having this answer you must reconsider the previous 4 steps accordingly.

If you can answer all questions clearly, then you get an effective marketing plan. It might be interesting to involve other people you know to answer the above questions.

Set a period for review, do not put your plan in practice immediately. Do not work at random, prioritize your steps and focus your energy to solve the most important points of your plan.

Inter Val has been around long enough to know what works and what doesn't. Learn more about marketing strategies.