To create a strategic marketing plan for a new product, you need to follow ten steps.

These ten steps include:

1. Determine Your Target Market
2. Research Your Competition
3. Design Your Product
4. Establish Your Marketing Goals And Objectives
5. Determine Your Marketing Budget
6. Establish A Schedule For Marketing Your Product
7. Build In Evaluation
8. Implement Your Plan
9. Continually Test Your Results
10. Adjust Your Plan According To Test Results

I’ll cover the first five of them in this post and the last five in my next post.

Create A Strategic Marketing Plan For A New Product: Step 1 - Determine Your Target Market

You determine your target market before you create your new product. Otherwise, your product may not have a market and won’t sell. So the first step is to determine your target market, what they want and need, and which features best meets their wants and needs. Adding such features will make your product better than your competitors’.

You can read more about target marketing at the posts below:

Get Your Free Target Market Analysis
Market Segmentation: Build Relationships With Your Target Market
Market Segmentation: Learn Your Target Market
Market Segmentation: Target Market Appeals
Market Segmentation: Target Market Profiles
Target Market: Eight Questions To Ask About Yours
Personas Compared To Target Market Research

Create A Strategic Marketing Plan For A New Product: Step 2 - Research Your Competition

You need to know what products are already offered that meet your target market’s needs. You need to know who your competitors are and their product’s strengths and weaknesses. You need to know how much they spend on marketing, what their marketing mix includes, and how successful they are at marketing their products.

I’ve written several articles and posts on competition. Below are links to them:
The Effect Of Competition On Pricing Strategy
Competitor Intelligence Statistics

This last link provides examples and links to four other articles in a five-part series.

Create A Strategic Marketing Plan For A New Product: Step 3 - Design Your Product

Once you know what your target market wants and what your competitors are providing, you need to design your product so that it offers at least one benefit not offered by your competitors.

Try to make weaknesses in your competitors’ products, strengths in yours. And don’t fail to look at weaknesses of your competitors businesses. For instance, customer service is a business function, not a part of your product.

But it has great bearing on whether your customers will be satisfied enough to buy from you again or to recommend your product or business to a friend. If you provide better customer service than your competitors, that’s a strength for your business.

For more information on product design see the following posts:

Marketing Product Life Cycle
Four Benefits of Market Segmentation: Benefit 1 -Improving Products
Business Market Segment: Product Characteristics
Mature Stage Of Marketing Product Life Cycle
4 P’s Of Marketing: Product 1
In Today’s Competitive Environment, Quality Products Demand Target Market Knowledge

Create A Strategic Marketing Plan For A New Product: Step 4 - Establish Your Marketing Goals And Objectives

Next you need to set your goals and objectives. These should be measurable and realistic, yet challenging.

The strengths or your product and the benefits that you added from your target market research should comprise the key message that you want to leave with your potential customers.

For more on goals and objectives, see the following post:
Elements of Intentional Marketing 1: Goals and Objectives

Read about key messages in the post below:
What Is A Key Message

Create A Strategic Marketing Plan For A New Product: Step 5 - Determine Your Marketing Budget

It makes no sense to plan marketing activities that you don’t have money to implement. So it’s vital that you plan your marketing budget for money you have or can borrow.

Don’t plan for product income to finance your marketing. That’s too risky because you may not make anything until you’re well into your marketing plan.

You can read more on budgeting by clicking on the following links:

Marketing Budget Basics: Review and Overview 1

Budgeting For Small Business Marketing – Five Tips

This concludes my coverage of the first five steps to create a strategic marketing plan for a new product. To read about the last five steps, click the link below:

Ten Steps To Create A Strategic Marketing Plan For A New Product Plan Part 2

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Posted 9-26-08: Ten Steps To Create A Strategic Marketing Plan For A New Product

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 6:49 am and is filed under Marketing Plans.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.