An important element of your basic marketing plan consists of the specific objectives you will try and attain and the overall strategy you will use to achieve those objectives.

It is worth noting that the marketing plan objectives should always lead to actual sales revenue. If not, you need to re-examine your marketing objectives and restate them so that they relate to sales results.

Marketing Objectives

Your marketing objectives should be:

• Clear and specific
• Tangible and measurable
• Be time-based, with a target achievement date

Some examples of a marketing objective you might include in your basic marketing plan are:

• Launch new product line on January 1, 2009 to target market, achieving sales target of $250,000 by December 31, 2009
• Re-launch “new and improved” product line to existing customer base, conveying enhancements and revisions and delivering 1,000 qualified sales leads by June 30, 2010.
• Increase product awareness among the target audience by 30% this year.

In many cases, you will have multiple, concurrent marketing objectives, in which case you should make sure that they are consistent with each other and support your overall marketing vision.

Marketing Strategy

In the marketing strategy section of your basic marketing plan, you should outline the strategic plan by which you intend to reach the objectives stated above.

You’ll want to specifically address the “four Ps” of marketing (also known as the marketing mix) to address four specific areas of your strategy.

• Product – the specifics about the product or service you will be marketing
• Price – your pricing strategy as it relates to the market conditions and your competition, specifying the exact pricing and offers you will make
• Promotion – the high-level plan of how and where you will advertise your product or service in order to reach your target audience, including TV, radio, print advertisements, direct mail and online marketing efforts
• Place (Distribution) – how the product/service and your prospective customer interact and engage in the selling process, including retail, mail-order, direct sales, telephone sales, wholesale or distributors, etc.

Although it may seem tedious, spending the time to carefully identify your marketing objectives and the overall marketing strategy you will use to reach those objectives will help you create the tactical marketing promotional plan that will ultimately inform and guide your marketing team on what specific actions need to be completed, when they need to be completed by and finally by whom they will be completed.