In order to create a marketing plan, or at least a marketing plan that is going to
be of any worth to you, you need to take a good look at the various business issues
that surround whatever it is you are wanting to market.

This is good news, because it forces you to not only focus on where you want to go,
it also requires you to evaluate your current situation. This little exercise can be
worth it’s weight in gold to you because very often it delivers up little nuggets of
useful information – many of which are only indirectly linked to marketing but which
nevertheless can have a profound effect on future performance.
Thus, in effect, the process you need to go through to create a marketing plan is often
just as useful to you as the finished product.Of course, actually implementing your
marketing plan is also of supreme importance if you are going to get the most out of
your efforts. However I’m constantly surprised at how many businesses hide their
marketing plan in the bottom draw somewhere and ignore it completely for the rest of
the year!

This tells me one of two things – either they have no idea how to implement a marketing
plan (i.e the plan is totally impractical), or they have no idea how to create a logical
and effective marketing plan.Or both!

There is no doubt that marketing, in its many forms and guises, forms the backbone of
just about every organisation nowadays. Even government departments and non profit
organisations need to attract money and skills to be effective and they do this by using
some form of marketing.

It goes without saying that your marketing has a far greater chance of success if you
create a marketing plan and implement it, rather than just drifting along, trying this
and that and then wondering what went wrong!

So spend some time and effort developing and implementing a well thought out marketing
plan – and make sure you pay attention to the process as well as the outcome!