Why you need a Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is a document or blueprint that outline the marketing and advertising efforts for your gardening, irrigation or patio business.  It is a way for you to see at a glance what your marketing goals are, what are the steps and how you are going to accomplish them.  You could have a general framework for the entire business or a specific time period.  The marketing plan shouldn’t be static and you should be regularly updating it as business conditions change.

A marketing plan is composed of a series of sections.  These sections are:

• Business summary
• Business initiatives
• Target market
• Marketing strategy
• Budget
• Measurements
• Marketing channels

The first part of a marketing plan is to summarize your business.  Though you probably already know everything about your business, this is a good exercise because it forces you to write it down and think about it as you are writing.  This could include a mission statement but doesn’t need to.  But the business summary should be concise and to the point.

The second part is business initiatives.  These are the business efforts you are aiming to accomplish that might need marketing efforts.

It is particularly important to set goals as part of our marketing plan.  The goals should align with your business initiatives.  They will help you identify specific marketing projects.  The goals will also list how they will be measured.

A useful framework for setting goals is to use SMART.  SMART stands for:

• Specific – the goal should be specific and not general.
• Measurable – the goal needs to be able to be measured and not vague.
• Achievable – the goal needs to be possible.
• Relevant – the goal needs to be relevant to what is being attempted.
• Time bound – the goal needs to have a time frame to finish.

A marketing plan is an outline of your gardening, irrigation or patio business marketing efforts.  It is composed on a number of sections.  A marketing plan start with a business summary, business initiatives and the goals of the marketing efforts.