What’s Your Marketing Plan?

[ParkLogic]

Before I left for the USA and DomainFest I wrote an article outlining how to build your online business and what it would really take. I then ran a webinar on how to construct a financial cashflow that amongst other things involved actually building a cashflow in front of the attendees for one of the members businesses. Lots of fun!



The next crucial part of any business is the Marketing Plan. I find that most people instinctively think that marketing is all about advertising. Although advertising is important it is only one small part of a marketing plan. Without going into a whole MBA course on marketing I’m going to really simplify things down.

There are a number of different models for understanding marketing but the easiest place to start is to remember the four Ps of marketing. They are:

Product
What is your product/service? Can you describe it in one sentence? What problem is it solving for your customers? What is your unique competitive advantage? These are all questions that revolve around your product. If you don’t clearly know what you are bringing to customers then they are unlikely to purchase it from you.

For example, many years ago when I had young children (they're older now) I found my wife purchasing wipes for our children (not a really nice product). The genius was that the containers were in the shape of a big lego brick that stacked up. She wasn’t buying the wipes she was buying the containers for the kids toys.

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