Know-How Exchange : Strategy

First step is to step back and tell yourself that you can do this. You'll find that everything required for a marketing plan is logical - when you are done, you will think to yourself "why did I worry about this".

This site (https://money.howstuffworks.com/marketing-plan.htm) gives good info and has a marketing plan outline. Read it all, copy and paste the marketing plan outline to the word processor of your choice, and then start filling in the blanks with what you know. What you don't know, start asking around (people in the know inside the company, research outside, etc.

Here is an article which I found interesting. Doesn't say much about the format of the plan, but covers some good ideas on what content you would need.
https://www.marketingprofs.com/Tutorials/frey1.asp Use as food for thought.

My my that is a quandry isn't it.

First of all, as long as you haven't oversold your capabilities I wouldn't panic . . . if the CEO knows your background, the CEO knows this is your first shot at building such an animal and is quite likely giving you the task as a learning experience. Treat it as such. Learn like crazy. Work hard. Prove not that you can build a great plan, but that you can do a great job trying.

That means be specific. Be accurate. Don't make assumptions you haven't tried to prove. Treat every idea as a hypothesis and then work to prove or disprove it.

A marketing plan should be a very simple thing--at least generically. I don't know anything about your company or its products/services and so on, so I say that guardedly but with confidence nevertheless.

Don't go for bulk . . . the smaller the plan the better.

One good book for people new to the game is "The Portable MBA in Marketing" published by Wiley. There are other similar books that do a good job dealing with the basics but I've had that one on my bookshelf for god knows how long and I still refer to it.

Never forget the 4 Ps . . . price, product, place (meaning: distribution) and promotion. They've pulled my hiney out of more than one fire over the last 30 years.

Attack the issue simply. Dig into these issues and find good answers (use the web).

Who comprises your marketplace? Don't try and get too granular, don't worry for now about segments and buying cycles and so on. Just answer that question: who buys what you sell?

Who do you compete with? Always remember that competition is not just similar products . . . it is any method people use to solve the same problem. Feet compete with automobiles to solve the problem of getting to the store.

How much of the problem do you solve, and how much do you solve in comparison to the competition? The more you solve, the higher your price (but I'd be surprised if your CEO wants you to define pricing strategy).

How are you going to deliver the product to the marketplace? Will you sell directly, or will you sell through indirect channels--like retail stores or distributors.

What will you need to do to promote the product. Web site? Brochues? Direct mail? Advertising? How much will these things cost to create? (And remember to add about 20% to any estimate you're given.)

This is, admittedly, very simplistic--were I to be doing a plan I would be spending time on things like positioning and segmentation and pricing strategies and partnerships and a ton of other things. But at its core I think this might be enough to at least get you started.

There's an outfit called Palo Alto Software (I think) that sells marketing plan templates (I think) and you may want to look into that. But a template is only as good as the information you fill it in with--so dig as deeply as you can with what I've mentioned above and whatever else seems like a good idea from the book I recommended or other books.

If you're serious about marketing as a career, you definitely want to read Ted Levitt . .. The Marketing Imagination is the best collection of his articles I know of. Clear, simple, brilliant stuff.

As they say in the tv commercial business: have fun with it!

The US Small Business Administration web site (www.sba.gov) has a wealth of information and examples. For example, here is a link to 60 sample business plans:

https://www.bplans.com/samples/sba.cfm

You might also check out:

https://www.score.org/readingroom.html