How to develop a marketing plan for your training company
What is a marketing plan?
A Marketing Plan is sometimes called a marketing strategy, in essence it is an action plan of what it is you are going to do to promote your business. Like any SMART goal it is a written plan that states the marketing goals and the objectives to be achieved over a specified period of time.
So if you are currently in business or looking to set up a training company or starting out in freelance training, the one thing you need is a clear plan – well in fact two plans… a business plan (a simple one page plan will do) and a marketing plan.
A marketing plan looks at three factors:
- Where is your business now?
- Where do you want/ need your business to be? (and why)
- How are you going to get your business there?
Jumping straight to step (2) or three is a waste of time without REALLY understanding (1) – where is your business now (are you now)? What do you do? Who do you do it with? For how much?
We need to follow some sound principles…
Knowledge -> Understanding -> Action
We need Knowledge of where we are – we need to understand or make sence of this in order to take appropriate Action
A Marketing Plan Template (example)
Executive Summary – What is the plan about – one or two simple paragraphs
Business Overview
– What do you do – be specific (to say you run management training courses is too vague)
Target market – who do you do it do/ with? The narrower & more specific the better
Vision – what do you want to be ?
Mission – Why are you in business? what is your purpose?
Current Analysis – where are you now ? what do you do? who to? for how much?
External Analysis – What is happening in the environment in which you are, or want to operate?
Conduct a PEST/ PESTLE analysis
Internal Analysis
Conduct a PRIMO-F analysis
Use the PESTLE & PRIMO-F data to complete a comprehensive SWOT analysis. Use this to consider where you are, where are you going and how are you going to get there?
Marketing Strategies – your plan
Consider what approaches (strategies) are required to achieve your desired goals. Look at:
- Marketing Mix (4 ps – product, place, pricing, promotion)
- Your target market
- Service/ product strategy
- Pricing approach
- Promotional strategy- how do people know you exist?
- Customers – acquisition, maintain – also see Ansoff matrix
Implementation Plan
What needs to be done. What actions.. by who… by when
Resourcing requirements
- How much money/ cash you need for your business plan
- Investment from you ?
- The people involved – is this just you? associates? partners?
This template will work equally well for a coaching or consulting company.
ralph says
17/07/2018 at 13:26We provide training for marketers at global web products. I am not sure that a traditional marketing plans are totally relevant to online business, especially SWOT or PEST analyses.
Mike Morrison says
26/07/2018 at 09:53If you do not understand elements of SWOT and PESTLE, how can you ensure that your web content is targeted at the right people?
Sure there is much more room for error than traditional marketing approaches.
Most SEO people will say the clearer you can define your audience and content the more successful you will be. These tools can help with that/
inovo publicidad says
16/01/2012 at 20:06Marketing plan for a training company http://t.co/xEUdattE by @247tweet
Mike says
15/03/2011 at 09:56New Blog post: Marketing plan for a training company