In business schools they either teach you overtly or give you the impression that a business plan is your key to success. The problem with a business plan is it is already outdated as soon as you finish creating it and the outcomes are all based on projections and not what really happened. The truth is a marketing plan is more important than a business plan. A business plan outlines how you will manage and build your business. But a marketing plan details how you will connect with customers and get them to come into your store and buy. You can have the best managed business in the world with the best products ever but if people don’t know that you exist, they will never come into your store. So, you need a good marketing plan designed to make people aware that you exist and lead them to choose you instead of your competitors.
The foundation of marketing is knowledge. That is, knowing what people want, knowing who the people are that want what you have, and knowing where they are so you can communicate with them cost effectively. With this information you can send these people messages to make them aware that you have what they want and where to find you. A maketing plan is simply a strategy on how to target your message to the people who want the product or service that you provide. A well formed marketing plan based on this knowledge will save you thousands of dollars in two ways: 1) in advertising to people who don’t want what you are offering; and 2) in lowering your customer acquisition costs. This is so simple you’d need help to misunderstand it. But people go to business school and pay a lot of money to get help to misunderstand business and marketing.
You don’t need a MBA to understand how to develop a marketing plan. The most profitable marketing plan is based on what you do, think, and feel when you go to the market yourself. You go shopping based on who you are or how you see yourself, what you want, and where you know that you can find what you want. If you don’t see yourself as low income or poor, you won’t shop for groceries at the corner store. When you know what you want but don’t know exactly where to find it you will use the internet to search for it. Once you have identified where you can get what you want, you go to the store that is conveniently located and that will give you a quality product and quality service at a fair price.
If you want a profitable business, you must learn how to market. There is a ton of free technology available that will help you identify the people who want what you have and to discover where they are. In order to find the people who want what you have you must know the words they use when they search for it on the internet. Amazon sells practically everything in the world. If you type your product into their search bar, a drop down box will appear and show you words people frequently used to find your product. Or you can open an “incognito tab” on Google by pressing Shift+Ctrl+N and do the same thing. You can use these words on your website and in your marketing messages in order to show up as an option in their search. The same thing applies with apps and plugins such as Google keyword planner, Facebook bots, or What would Seth Godin Do. This technilogy will help you learn what Billions of people are searching for and give you the opportunity to convert them into customers. This is invaluable information that you will need if you are trying to decide what product to produce and sell.
The problem “professional” marketers with MBA degrees would have in developing a marketing plan for your company is consumers don’t tell marketing planners what they want. MBA’s will try to use surveys and other things to learn what people want but that information ends up being useless because people are not good at telling you what they want. This is why it is important to use a tool like Google Keyword Planner that provides insight into what people are thinking about buying. That information reveals what they really want or are looking for at that particular time. No one becomes rich by just selling anything. The people who become wealthy are those who produce what people really want.
Now, here’s a quiet secret. People are more likely to pay for what they want than for what they need. Sadly, people buy what they want and beg for what they need. This is the reason people will complain that your price is too high when you offer a product or service that they “need”. They won’t complain about the price of red bottom shoes or vintage wine because that’s what they want. But, when it comes to something they need, what they “want” is for you to give it to them for free. So, use information from apps and search engines to find out what people want by learning what they have been searching for.
Action Plan
Before deciding on the product or service you want to offer or before creating your marketing plan try using Amazon or incognito to see how this works. You can also open a Gmail account for free to run ads on Google. Use their planning tool to plug in a few keywords related to the product or service that you offer. This will show you how many people are actively searching for what you offer. And you will learn what words to use in your marketing message in order to attract them as customers.
