STEP 2 –  DEFINE THE PROBLEM WITH YOUR BUSINESS:

You’ve conducted research to give you a current picture of where your business is today.  During this process, you searched through the history of your organization, you looked at your external markets and audiences, you looked at your company operations and your team, and you looked at where you are heading in the future.  Ultimately, you have uncovered problems with your organization, problems that your marketing plan is going to help you address.  This is the stage where you define your business problem.  We are going to look at the problems that have been uncovered during research, and prepare a statement of the problem that we can focus on while developing our marketing plan.

For example, perhaps your research revealed to you that your sales have been stagnate for the past two years, you haven’t grown your customer base in several months or years, and you have terrible or non-existent relations with your clients.  Use the results of your research to define the problem your marketing plan is going to solve.

Sample problem:  ABC company does not have any formal and ongoing communications in place with its clients and therefore currently has weak relationships with its clients.  There are no strategies in place to increase market share and raise annual revenue.

STEP 3 – Build a marketing plan that works for your business