How to prepare a marketing plan for my store?

 but advertising is just one of many aspects that a marketing plan contains. It may seem not very easy, but with Cerdá, it is possible to make an effective marketing plan.

If you are a store owner, you want to increase your sales and meet your goals; we invite you to learn how to design a marketing plan.

What is a marketing plan?

A plan is a set of instructions and ordered procedures to follow and achieve a specific objective. Marketing is all the techniques, studies, and tools that aim to improve the sales and image of a product or service. 

Finally, a marketing plan is all the steps and procedures that a business must follow to improve sales, promotion, and the image of a product, service, or store.

Why is a Marketing Plan Important?

The marketing plan allows us to know the status of the organization from an external view, to understand more about the client's needs, and to improve the way of creating connections with all the interested parties. However, a marketing plan should not be confused with advertising plans because advertising is only a small part of it. The reasons for establishing a marketing plan are:

• It helps the store know its current status in the market, the customer's attention, and what they think of their product.
• It allows knowing the company's internal errors, the target audience, demographic information, prices, costs, advertising, and other factors. 
• It allows for fulfilling the objectives of the store and the proposed goals.
• Making ordered plans allows us to understand the phases and the structure of the actions that will be taken.
• It guarantees better sales, advertising, competitiveness, and a good position in the market. 
• It is easy to control and know when something is not right.
• You can make projected plans to one year, and manage it as a project.

Steps to create your store marketing plan

A poorly designed marketing plan can be very harmful because it could cause the store to lose customers, money, market position, and valuable time. If you are ready to design a marketing plan for your store, you must be careful and follow the steps correctly. If in doubt, don't be afraid to ask a marketing expert. 

Know the store and the objectives

The first step is to know the store's current state, its objectives, monthly sales, goals, mission, vision, and any critical information about what you want to achieve. All plans must have a solid basis so that you don't make mistakes, meet the store's goals, and always improve every aspect.

Establish who the target audience is

Many stores make the mistake of offering a product to anyone because they believe that sales will increase. However, they don't realize that they are missing their section of the public that may be interested in the product. The most recommended is to think about the demographic characteristics of the desired client, which can be:

• Age
• Sex
• Religion
• Salary
• Location (national, international)
• Hobbies

Carry out a market study

A market study is an exhaustive investigation of all the market information (target customers, suppliers, competition). The market study may sound simple, but it is the most crucial part of the whole marketing plan because all the Actions and strategies are based on this study. One of the ways to carry out this study is:

• Search all possible information on the internet about the target customers and their interests, needs, problems, etc.
• Obtain as much information as possible from the competition, which are the keywords they use (you can use SEO tools), how they meet customers' needs, and how to improve the service.
• Do surveys for industry experts, potential customers, entrepreneurs, and any interested parties.
• Do a SWOT analysis of your store (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
• Analyze all the information collected and write a conclusion.

Set goals, strategies, budgets and control

If you have market research, clarity in your objectives and goals, it is time to establish what strategies you must follow to obtain the desired results. Having all the strategies, you must determine the budget that you can assign to the marketing plan. Finally, which ones and when the results will be measured to determine the marketing plan's effectiveness.

We recommend talking to experts in marketing strategies to establish everything necessary for the marketing plan and its monitoring.

Apply the marketing plan

If you have reached this section, we want to congratulate you for having decided to implement a marketing plan. This final step consists of following the developed plan, not skipping any steps, and always being attentive to the results obtained to verify the changes made.

At Cerdá, we care about the well-being of our clients' stores, that is why we want to accompany you and help you achieving your goals and increasing sales and benefits. Don’t think it twice and make it real, create your store marketing plan!