Your company has recently created a new product or service and you are eager to get it out onto the marketplace. You know your product or service solves a need and has a competitive advantage, but you don’t know where to get started when it comes to creating a marketing plan.
In this three part series, we will go into the step by step process of creating a marketing plan for your new product or service.
We will discuss:
- The details associated with planning your marketing around your product
- How to conduct a marketing audit
- Launching your product or service
Let’s dive right in.
Step 1) The Marketing Planning Process
Before your company puts a new product out into the marketplace it should carefully outline and create a marketing plan. If you know who your product or service is for then it makes it that much easier to start the marketing process.
Let’s take a look into the different components you should know and define when creating your marketing plan.
Define Your Target Market
A lot of people get excited about all the problems their product or service can solve but they often fail to accurately define who their product or service is meant to serve.
It’s very important to determine your target market before you officially launch your product or service because it will give you the ability to make your sales proposition much more targeted to your consumers.
Since you have created a brand new product or service you will have to create your target market. This involves a few key steps, but starts off with a single important question.
What does your product or service do ?
Steps to Creating Your Target Market
Understanding the Pain Points of Your Customers
An important component to marketing your new product or service is to put yourself in the shoes of your future customers. Building components of your marketing plan around certain pain points that customers currently face is a great way to get their attention and highlight ways your product or service can solve those challenges.
Common pain points for customers can include:
- Product or service price
- Product or service accessibility
- Limitations of services and products
- Lack of knowledge about functionality of the products or services
- Etc
Addressing common concerns customers may have about a product or service inside your marketing shows you are paying attention to the details and consumers will notice.
Deciding on Marketing Channels
Not all marketing channels are created equal.
So many businesses fail to select the marketing channel that will align with their product or service. You have to know where your customers tend to be in order to accurately select the right marketing channel to use for your product.
Different Marketing Channels
Once you accurately create your target market it’s important to carefully access the different types of marketing channels that you can advertise through. If you know your target demographic you can have a good idea of where they tend to be.
- They could be on social media
- They could be doctors and lawyers at work
- They could be searching for quotes online for insurance
- Etc.
You have to begin to think like a consumer before deciding on your marketing channel. This starts with your product first and then knowing your target demographic.
Defining Your Marketing Mix
The traditional marketing mix consists of product, price, promotion and place. These are the four pillars of the marketing mix. Your marketing mix is critical when it comes to position your product or service in the marketplace.
Recommended Reading: Understanding the Marketing Mix| the 4 P’s of Marketing
Below are the different components associated with the marketing mix.
These should be clearly defined and understood by your marketing team and aligned before you release your product or service in the marketplace
Create a Marketing Budget
Creating a new product or service can come with it’s own set of monetary and budget challenges. It’s important to clearly define and come up with a marketing budget that won’t send your company into negative territory.
A quarterly or monthly budget on your marketing and advertising is important to have in place so you can keep your operations well balanced.
It’s also imperative that you have ways to measure how your marketing efforts correlate to your product or service sales. This is important because it allows you to know when you should increase or decrease your marketing spend in order to increase your sales.