How Marketing Plans Work

Market Research and Analysis

The research and analysis stage of your planning process is very important. On the following pages, we'll go over the steps you need to follow in order to build your plan. It is important to understand that each step builds upon the previous step.

You'll build your plan layer by layer. For example:

Research and analysis are critical because they lead you to identifying your product's target audience, as well as its strengths, weaknesses, threats and, most importantly, opportunities.
Knowing the threats and opportunities your product faces helps you more realistically set your sales goals and objectives.
Knowing your opportunities, target audience, and sales goals will give you the information you need to set your marketing goals to take advantage of the opportunities and meet the sales goals.
Knowing your marketing objectives will give you the information you need to set your positioning, pricing, distribution, and other marketing strategies.
Having your strategies set will give you the road map to set up the tactical elements of your marketing plan, such as advertising, promotions, branding, packaging, etc. -- all of those things you have to tailor to your market.
Once your tactical elements are determined, you can determine your creative element, budgets, and calendar.

So you see, each step is critical to the success of your planning efforts. Let's get started.