Great marketing begins with great ideas. Great execution of those ideas depends on great planning—on the development of a great marketing plan. Whether you’re developing your core strategic marketing foundation, or launching a new tactical program into the marketplace, the quality, efficiency and cost of execution will depend on the quality of the planning that went into it.

A marketing plan is the single most important guidepost you’ll have to maximize effectiveness and minimize the risk of marketing. This is especially true for entrepreneurs and small business owners, who may be new to the process of plan creation, who may be operating with a limited budget — and maybe both.

It is a way of forcing you to think through every aspect of the program — from competitive analysis to collateral development. A way of communicating your ideas, and opening those ideas to inspection and validation from others. A way of eliminating surprises. And a way of ensuring that you can respond to conditions that change, or that were not known to you, when you created the plan.

Creating a marketing plan involves unequal doses of research, analysis, hypotheses, validation and some plain old legwork. Most of all, it involves writing — and writing a solid, effective, workable marketing plan is a craft in and of itself.

Specific elements covered in this seminar include:

1. Defining a vision/mission/values statement
2. An overview of the positioning process
3. A basic approach to pricing
4. Conducting a SWOT Analysis
5. Conducting a Lifetime Customer Analysis
6. Identifying Marketing’s Role in the Sales Strategy
7. Identifying Marketing’s Role in Channel Control and Support
8. Defining a Whole Product Strategy
9. Planning the Components of a Product Launch