Product Marketing Plan

When developing a product marketing plan write an outline of your strategy, research the information you need to use, fill in any critical gaps in your outline, then create a report that includes statistical information captured in graphs, charts and tables.

This report can now serve multiple purposes. It can be used as a manual for your marketing plan, a way to present your plan to financiers and partners, and the basis for a marketing, advertising and sales campaign.

Here are 3 essential elements you need to structure a useful outline:

1. Create a mission statement.

This should include your business, manufacturing, product development and marketing objectives.

2. Understand your target market.

Ask questions like:

• What is the size of the customer base?
• What are they buying right now?
• Why are they making these purchases?
• What problem are they trying to resolve?
• What makes our product a better solution than what is currently available for these customers?
• How much are customers willing to pay for our solution?
• How long will it take to make a sale?
• What is the competition doing well?
• What is the competition doing poorly?
• What else can we do to provide customer satisfaction, repeat business, and referrals?

3. Study your competition.

The success of your marketing plan is based on how well you distinguish yourself from the competition. On one hand, you want your product to offer customers a ring of familiarity. On the other hand, you don’t want to be mistaken for a copy cat competitor.

In order to understand your competition, you need to ask questions like:

• Who are my competitors and what are they currently doing in this industry?
• What type of advertising, marketing, and selling strategies are the best in the business doing?
• What type of price points are my competitors offering customers?
• What is the most effective production and distribution model in this business?

Once these elements have been identified and described, and once you have done your research work to answer essential questions and created a report that fully describes your marketing plan, your next steps include market testing, making strategic decisions, writing an action plan and implementing it.