Part 4: The Marketing Plan – Advertising and Promotion

Advertising and Promotion Plan
The Advertising and Promotion section of your marketing plan describes how you’re going to carry out your unique selling propositions to your potential customers. Focus will set you apart from a successful Advertising and Promotion plan from an unsuccessful one.

Think of the message that you want your targeted audience to see, and then look at the possible promotion possibilities, and decide which aspects to emphasize the most on in your marketing plan.

Advertising – When advertising you need to think in terms of media, and which media will be the most effected towards your targeted audience. You don’t want to advertise a kids ninja turtle play set during ‘The OC’. Once you figure this out, then you can make decisions about your annual advertising budget.

Once you have figured out your annual advertising budget, you need to figure out what percentage will you invest in each of the following:

  • The Internet
  • Television
  • Radio
  • Newspapers
  • Magazines
  • Telephone books / Diretories
  • Billboards
  • Benches / busses / subway
  • Direct Mail

Don’t just include how much the advertising will cost you for each, but also include how much business you expect the advertising to bring in.

Sales Promotion – If appropriate, you may want to incorporate sales promotion activities to your advertising and promotion plan such as:

  • Offering free samples
  • Coupons
  • Point of purchase displays
  • Product demonstrations

Marketing Materials – All businesses will have some sort of marketing materials in their business either it be a business card, brochures, and pamphlets.

Publicity – Describe how you are going to generate publicity. You should consider:

  • Product launches
  • Special events
  • Community involvement
  • Writing articles
  • Using testimonials

Business Web Site – If you plan on launching a website for your business, you should describe how your web site fits into your advertising and promotion plan.

Tradeshows – These can be an highly effective promotional and sales tool. Make sure that you pick the right ones to go to and be ready to put your promotional plan into action.

Other Promotional Activities – Your promotion activities and attempts are limited by your imagination. If you plan on sponsoring a community event or teach a course, make sure you include it in your advertising and promotion plan. Sporadic and unplanned attempts to promote your product or service are only going to fail. Your goal here is to plan it out, and then carry out a sequence of promotional activities that will target your potential customers.

No matter what kind of business you plan on starting even if it is small – creating a marketing plan won’t hurt. No business is to small for customers and clients. You are bound to have both customers and clients, so you will need to be able to communicate with them about your products and services.

This will finish our discussion on the marketing section of our business plan. Tomorrow we will be discussing the Management Plan section of the Business Plan.

Part 1: The Marketing Plan Section of the Business Plan
Part 2: The Marketing Plan - Pricing Strategy
Part 3: The Marketing Plan - Sales and Distribution
Part 4: The Marketing Plan - Advertising and Promotion

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