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A Sample Marketing Plan Outline

By Ira Gostin © 2003 www.gostin.com

Here's a sample marketing plan that you can use as a matrix to build one for your business!

Marketing Action Plan

1.1 Business Summary Info - You should also have a business summary page which outlines the type of business (corporation, partnership, sole-proprietorship) and basic information like bank contacts, insurance contacts, etc.

1.2 Management Team - You should also have a brief section introducing your "team" (your team includes you, your studio manager, all of your contract people such as assistants, accountants, lawyers, etc.)

2.1 Marketing Message "Acme Photography is dedicated to providing studio photography for business...." This section should state your marketing message - or messages, depending upon your different marketing strategies.

4.1 Market Segment 1
4.2 Market Segment 2
4.3 Market Segment 3

I recommend organizing your marketing plan into specific pieces of time in which to actually build the plan. I recommend a two-year plan. After nine months or so, you can revise the plan a little to keep it simpler, but remember the first one will be the most difficult. A "market segment" is each area of photography that you are pursuing. For instance, if you do special-event photography in addition to the studio work, that would be a market segment. In this section, you are breaking down your objectives into each category of photography. As an example: Market Segment 1: To increase the amount of 4x5 product photography for advertising and brochures. Remember to keep it simple.

5.0 Market Analysis

5.1 Market Segment 1
5.2 Market Segment 2
5.3 Market Segment 3

7.1 Market Segment 1
7.2 Market Segment 2
7.3 Market Segment 3

Using those same market segment identifiers from 4.0 and 5.0, you are now outlining your action plan of marketing. For instance, if market segment one is architectural photography, which is an area you have done some work in but want to do more work in, the action plan will now say something like this: Market Segment 1 - Architectural Photography. I will contact local associations of architects and obtain their mailing list as well as referencing Chamber of Commerce lists, phone book, and any other lists that I can obtain. At that point I will telephone each of the contacts, finding out who at each architects firm handles marketing and I will mail that person a cover letter, a promotional piece featuring one or two architectural pictures and I will follow that mailing up with another mailing approximately four weeks later. I will start a telephone campaign to make portfolio appointments. I will follow the same through for commercial builders and interior designers."

8.0 Marketing Campaign (by marketing discipline)

8.1 Public Relations
8.2 Direct Mail
8.3 Advertising
8.4 Special Projects

This section is where you break down each of the market disciplines and write a one-paragraph plan for each. These small plans will then plug into the marketing schedule, providing you with a breakdown of market activities for the year (or years) ahead.

9.0 Goals To be truly efficient, a written goal must have the following: a clearly identified objective, a clear and concise plan of action, and a realistic deadline. A proper goal must be specific. A goal of "make more money this year" doesn't work. A goal of "increase architectural photography gross billing by 18% in the year or increase by 5 to 7% per quarter to be analyzed at the end of each quarter using computer generated data from Quickbooks" would certainly be more reasonable and easy to obtain.

10.0 Marketing Schedule Take all of the goals and the action items from the previous sections, assign them dates of implementation, and list them by calendar month. This gives you a master calendar which can be posted or put in your planner, or utilized in some other fashion that you would follow and implement.

Overall Marketing Plan Comments

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