National Clothesline

Put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Do you know why they buy your services? Is your pricing appropriate? Do you simply knock off 20 to 30 percent whenever clients turn scarce?

Have you set any marketing

targets or sales goals for the next 12 months or five years?

A marketing plan gives you a roadmap that can drive action and point the way. A marketing plan can help you:

• Identify which customers are your best prospects.

• Evaluate company data against the rest of the industry.

• Track results so you learn what works.

Without a plan, you may be moving fast, but you may not be moving in the right direction. Here are five steps to creating a strategic and practical marketing plan.

This one business secret can be more important to your business success than anything else you do. It can determine how much success you eventually achieve through your business.

Strategy is the long-term direction you will take to achieve your planned objectives, while tactics are short-term actions used to implement your strategy.

Strategy is something you do carefully, methodically and calculatingly to accomplish your precise, well-defined goals. It enables you to exercise complete control over competitive issues, threats and opportunities.

Basically, strategy is your detailed master game plan and tactics are the individual means used to successfully implement that plan. Your strategy is the most important single business function you will ever develop.

Tactics are merely the steps and actions you use to help achieve your strategic goals. The four Ps of strategic marketing are:

• Product: Offering the right services for your market.

• Price: Selling your services for an amount that makes your target customer feel it’s a good deal

• Promotion: Creating the right image in all of your advertising: print – direct mail, flyers, brochures, and postcards, TV or radio spots, newspaper or magazine ads, and online.

• Place: Offering your services where your target customers find them convenient.

If you can offer the right services at the right price in front of the right customers, you're profits will soar. Keep in mind that a high volume of sales isn’t the key. Profit is.

The goal of marketing is to generate the interest or recognition that will lead to the sales that will boost profits. That’s the reason to create a strategy. You want to craft persuasive messages for the customers you target.

You also want messages that promise only what you can actually deliver.

To find the best marketing strategy for your company, set up brainstorming meetings with advisors you trust, such as friends, staff, or other drycleaners. Meetings can be brown-bag lunches or informal offsite meetings. Just stay away from ringing phones and don’t expect to get everything done in one meeting.

You might consider taping these sessions and distilling the best ideas and suggestions. Start putting notes on paper. Describe the state and size of your marketplace, what mediums will work best, your target customer (age, income, locations, and purchase patterns) and how your services rate against competitors.

Next, you need to know how customers react to your quality and price, service and delivery, image and brand — everything, in short, that influences their purchasing decision.

To discover what customers think, just ask them. Survey some of your current customers as well as customers you want to reach. Make personal calls or send them surveys via e-mail or postcards. Include an incentive to boost participation, such as a discount or a free cleaning.

Based on what you learn, prepare a SWOT analysis that looks at your business in fresh ways:

• Strengths: What makes your business thrive?

• Weaknesses: What are your vulnerabilities?

• Opportunities: What market conditions or segments can lead to growth?

• Threats: How are competitors snapping at your heels?

Now that you have an overview of customers and market conditions, you can develop a marketing plan. This plan needn’t be a formal document, but should at least consist of a written outline to share with staff or outside consultants and to refer to later.

Track your marketing efforts to know if they are paying off or if you should rethink your approach. Calculate the category and cost of marketing communications and compare with set sales before and after.

Also, make sure to include plans for a marketing calendar. Plans are great, but if you don’t also designate responsibility, set deadlines and hold people accountable, marketing efforts can’t succeed.

Finally, don’t rest on your laurels. Markets change all the time and you must be ready. Make sure to review the plan every year to see what needs to be revised.