These are some of the more important components of a successful marketing strategy: First, you must clearly identify your target market. Second, you have to research on that specific target market. And third, you have to develop specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time bound objectives. More often than not, these key elements are not present in most marketing campaigns. Without a cohesive plan, which includes a timeline for critical action points, only luck will save the marketing effort from becoming a failure, or worse, a tarnished reputation.
Marketing plans should not just exist in the heads of management executives because they can easily get lost for reasons that executives leave or they forget everything about it. These plans should be manualized; or better yet, written in booklet printing. The overall strategic marketing plan should be the bible for any business. The marketing plan should include in its outline a goal, deadline, and specific actions to take to achieve the goal. Call it the company's road map if you like. And as such, they should be in color booklet format.
That, however, is only the beginning of the plan. Each one of the individual efforts outlined in the marketing plan should have its own detailed plan for the who, what, where, when, why and how of the plan's execution for maximum return on investment and objectives. These details should all be outlined in the print booklets for example. Although most of these six components (who, what, where...) are inextricably inter-related and a change in one of them can cause a ripple effect amongst the other five, the one most important criteria is the "why" - or the objective for a particular marketing endeavor. Once we determine the desired outcome, the other five components can be better defined and targeted to meet that outcome.
The following criteria should be used to define the objectives of the marketing campaign:
Specific: An objective should be specific. It defines what needs to be accomplished in very detailed terms. For instance, an objective of being the Number 1 in the industry is not exactly specific. It is in fact, very broad and difficult to measure. Number 1 in what aspect? Why don