21 Steps to Marketing Mastery Outline

21 Steps To Marketing Mastery:
A Self-study Crash Course To Building Small Business Success Through Effective Marketing On A Budget

This is the Skeleton Outline of a complete Marketing Plan. Use it freely. Download it at http://www.doubleplanet.com. For uses see the accompanying workbook, available at the Double Planet, Ltd. Co. Website. E-version available in iTunes Bookstore. See below for more details.

How to use this: Right Click, Select All, Copy, and Paste this entire article into a New Document in Your favorite Word Processor. Follow the instructions here, and in the book 21 Steps to Marketing Mastery, filling in your responses in the appropriate section of this, your Marketing Plan!

The Skeleton Outline to Marketing Mastery

I. The Business
A. Company Information
B. Operations
C. Finances
II. Marketing
A. Products / Services Description
B. Positioning / Niche
1. Objectives
a. For the Business
b. For this Marketing Campaign
2. Pricing Strategy
3. Define your Target Market(s)
4. Needs of the Market
5. your Competitiveness
a. The Competition
b. Your Competitive Strengths / Benefits / Advantages
c. Your Competitive Weakness (as regards Positioning)
C. The Creative Plan
D. Media Checklist / Budget
E. Marketing Timeline

To create the book / course, this each line of this Skeleton Outline was numbered like this:

The Skeleton Outline to Marketing Mastery
[Step 1.]
I. The Business
[Step 2.]
A. Company Information
[Step 3.]
B. Operations
[Step 4.]
C. Finances
[Step 5.]
II. Marketing
[Step 6.]
A. Products / Services Description
[Step 7.]
B. Positioning / Niche
[Step 8.]
1. Objectives
[Step 9.]
a. For the Business
[Step 10.]
b. For this Marketing Campaign
[Step 11.]
2. Pricing Strategy
[Step 12.]
3. Define your Target Market(s)
[Step 13.]
4. Needs of the Market
[Step 14.]
5. your Competitiveness
[Step 15.]
a. The Competition
[Step 16.]
b. Your Competitive Strengths / Benefits / Advantages
[Step 17.]
c. Your Competitive Weakness (as regards Positioning)
[Step 18.]
C. The Creative Plan
[Step 19.]
D. Media Checklist / Budget
[Step 20.]
E. Marketing Timeline
[Step 21.]

This creates the 21 Steps of the Book/ Course. A brief description if each step follows, creating a more linear approach to a not-necesarily-linear process. complete these 21 Steps to achieve success through complete marketing mastery!

Step 1 – Getting started. Get the tools to succeed, commit to use them, and begin. This relates to the entire plan, which is the sum of all these steps taken together. Return to this step at the end of the course.

Step 2 – Doing Business. Related to the business planning section of your own plan.

Step 3 – Naming your business and finding a place to operate from, especially as regards the bottom line of your marketing efforts.

Step 4 – Day-to-day operating procedures. describe how your business runs.

Step 5 – who needs money? Who needs to keep track of it? how do you take it in? How do you keep track of it? How much will you need?

Step 6 – What is marketing? Do you really need it? This is the other part of business. This will be described by the rest of the steps taken together (Steps 7 thru 21)

Step 7 – What do you sell? Describe the products and services this plan is for. What are the features of you offering?

Step 8 – What is your niche? And how will you position your products / services in the marketplace? This consideration, niche, and branding are related to the next 10 steps taken together. Complete steps 9 thru 18 to get this picture of your marketing.

Step 9 – What are you trying to accomplish? What are your goals? Refine this with steps 10 and 11 together.

Step 10 – What are your objectives for the business? What are you trying to accomplish, for the business. What are you bugger picture goals?

Step 11 – What are your goals for this campaign? What are you trying to accomplish more specifically with this marketing campaign?

Step 12 – Pricing strategies. What does pricing have to do with marketing? A pricing strategy has to be established on some level to get a complete picture of your position in the marketplace. Price products and services profitably to succeed in profitability and positioning yourself correctly.

Step 13 – Define your market. The better you know your customers, the people who give you their money for the value solutions you give them in exchange. The better you know your customers, the more efficiently you can reach them, the more profit you can make. Who buys your products and services? Describe them. Name them.

Step 14 – Define the needs of your market. What needs does your product and service fill. This is what you are really selling! And what gaps are there in the marketplace that your products / service offering fill? Define this for profits!

Step 15 – Define and refine your competitiveness in the marketplace. Steps 16 thru 18 taken together. How do you fair in the marketplace?

Step 16 – Analyze your competition. Describe them. Name them. How do they price their products and services? The better you know your competition, the better you can find your unique niche, or unique selling points. This is how you compete by not competing, by doing something unique, and different, and leaving the competition in the dirt. This is how you price higher than your competition!

Step 17 – Your strengths? What are the benefits of doing business with you? What makes you better? What do you beat your competition at? This will be the drama in your offering! Translate features of your products and services into the true benefits your customers are buying from you! What makes you better than the competition, exactly? What perceived problems does your company solve for your patrons?

Step 18 – Your weakness. Never compete here. Never emphasize this. But know it well! Know where NOT to go with your marketing. Again, this is more of a defining of what you do exactly that is different from, and better than the competition. Define the ground you actually compete on. Don’t let your competition do it!

Step 19 – What will your marketing say. Use the above planning to refine what you are selling, the message you are selling it with, and the media employed to sell it. This is your Creative Plan. the highly refined all of your marketing materials and processes contain consistently in order to indelibly ingrain your message in your customers minds. Let me try to say this more plainly. All your your planning needs to be refined down to unique selling points, calls to action, etc. To be effective, you marketing message needs to get people past the headline. It needs to get them to call, or take some action, to buy your products and services to keep you in business and profitable. Your message needs to be clear, refined, concise, and qualify them instead of confusing. It needs to be consistent, and in every communication your company sends out.

Step 20 – Media Checklist and Budget. If you can’t afford to use a marketing media effectively, then don’t use it at all! Definitely don’t use marketing media ineffectively. Only use the ones you can use successfully! Express your budget in your Marketing Plan. Make it a percentage of your bottom line. Define exactly what media’s and tactics you will employ in this Marketing. What about Promotion verses Advertising, or How to get media to advertise FOR you! Who will you market to, with what message and media, what weapons of attack. Make it all jibe with your budget.

Step 21 – Your Marketing Timeline. This is the actual guideline you will use to implement your Marketing Plan. Begin now for the quickest success! Apply all you have learned here. Undertake to learn more. Measure how you are doing, and relate it all back to the Plan. Constantly refine and improve the plan and the method in order to achieve ever greater success! Go back to Step 1 and integrate all this again!

Now What?

Get the book that goes along with this. It is $12.99 for a copy of the Print Edition (postage charges apply) and $1.99 for the iTunes Bookstore Edition.

It is a concise, complete course, the shortest path to getting your small business where it needs to be through effective marketing. Check it out now!

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