HOW TO MAKE A BUSINESS PLAN? PART#4

Advertising And Promotion Plan

First the Advertising and Promotion section of the marketing plan describes how you're going to deliver your Special Selling Proposition to your customers. While there are thousands of different promotion avenues available to you, what distinguishes a successful Advertising and Promotion Plan from an unsuccessful one is focus - and that's what your Special Selling Proposition provides.

So think first of the message that you want to send to your targeted audience. Then look at these promotion possibilities and decide which to Confirm in your marketing plan:

Advertising - The best Way to advertising is to think of it in terms of media and which media will be most effective in reaching your target market. Then you can make decisions about how much of your annual advertising budget you're going to spend on each medium (payment for advertising).

What percentage of your annual advertising budget will you Spend in each of the following:

the Internet

television

radio

newspapers

magazines

telephone books/directories

billboards

bench/bus/subway ads

direct mail

cooperative advertising with wholesalers, retailers or other businesses?

Include not only the cost of the advertising but your projections about how much business the advertising will bring in.

Sales Promotion - If you used it to your business, you may want to activate sales promotions into your advertising and promotion plan, such as:

offering free samples

coupons

point of purchase displays

product demonstrations

Marketing Materials - Every business will include some of these in their promotion plans. The most known marketing material is the business card, brochures, pamphlets and service sheets are also incloded.

Publicity - Another way of promotion that every business should use. Describe how you plan to generate publicity. While press releases spring to mind, that's only one way to get people spreading the word about your business. and it contains:

* product launches

* special events, including any events may happen in your society.

* writing articles

* getting and using testimonials (iso / any other certificates)

Your Business' Web Site - If your business has or will have a Web site, describe how your Web site describe your advertising and promotion plan.

Tradeshows - Trade show can be the magic effective promotion and sales chances - if you pick the right ones and go directly to put your promotion plan into action. My article "Trade Show Tips" explains how to choose the right trade shows and gives display tips to make the most of your trade show experience.

Other Promotion Activities

Your promotion activities are truly limited only by your imagination. If you plan to teach a course, sponsor a community event, or conduct an email marketing, you'll want to include it in your advertising and promotion plan. and Remember that, any sporadic unconnected attempts to promote your product or service are bound to fail; your goal is to plan and carry out a sequence of focused promotion activities that will communicate with your potential customers.

While small businesses often are little (or non-existent) promotion budgets, that doesn't mean that small businesses can't design and product effective promotion plans.

No business is too small to have a marketing plan. After all, no business is too small for customers or clients. And if you have these, you need to communicate with them about your products and/or services.