Writing a marketing plan can appear daunting. Over the past 20 years, marketing has only become increasingly complex, as marketers are forced to address more potential avenues of reaching customers that were not available previously. Think social media-Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat-and podcasting.

Whatever the requirements of your marketing plan may be, it should undoubtedly answer key questions, including: What does your business offer its customers? Who is your target audience? Why would your prospective customers want to buy your product? How can you reach potential customers through marketing messages? What marketing mediums best serve your business model? How can you overcome obstacles related to marketing your business? What are your short- and long-term marketing goals? How will you track your marketing strategy's success?

Yesterday, Promotional Consultant Today shared five key elements that should be included in your marketing plan. Today, we wrap up with five more key areas to include as suggested by Kajabi, a knowledge commerce platform.

1. Determine a pricing and positioning strategy. Perhaps, after an in-depth competitor analysis, you noticed that you're charging much more or much less than your competition. First, set your pricing strategy, then create your positioning strategy. This is a statement that describes your business culture, your target audience, your strategy for meeting your prospective customers' needs and the factors differentiating you from the competition.

2. Create content for each stage of the buyer's journey. Now it's time to create content, but first you need to plan what the content will be about. In your marketing plan, you should establish an editorial calendar that describes what and where you will post. For example:

Where you'll post: company blog, social media, message boards and forums, guest blogs

What you'll post: how-to guides, listicles, long-form educational content, photos and videos

Plan your content calendar at least four months in advance, and include the topic and outline for each piece of content as well as where it will be published. Each piece of content should target customers in specific parts of the buying cycle. For example, in the awareness stage, you establish yourself as an authority and convince prospective customers that you have something they need. In this stage, your content should serve to educate and inform, but not to sell. How-to guides and lists are excellent content for this stage.

3. Create a distribution plan. Your marketing plan should also include the ways that you'll distribute your marketing messages. You have several options, but they might not all fit with your business plan and structure. This can include e-mail, social media, blogging and paid advertising.

4. Set your marketing budget. Regardless of how big your online business is, you need a marketing budget. This tells you exactly how much cash you can spend on marketing and remain in the black.

5. Write an executive summary. This is actually the first document in your marketing plan, but you might want to write it last. You now have all the other pieces of the puzzle in place, so you can write a clear, actionable executive summary that considers all the research you've conducted. It's like reading a book and writing a summary about it; you won't know all of the contents of that book until you've read through it entirely.

An executive summary is a brief document that's written in paragraph form. It should nail down several specific facts, including:

  • Product descriptions
  • An overview of your business's goals and objectives
  • The purpose of the marketing plan and what you're striving to accomplish
  • Marketing methods you're planning to pursue
  • The steps you'll take to reach the goals needed to achieve this pursuit

Learning how to write a marketing plan will make your business more structured and more relevant to your audience. It will remove the guessing game portion of determining which direction to go with marketing. And because you have a plan in place, it'll also help you set priorities and manage both your time and budget effectively.

Source: Kajabi is a knowledge commerce platform for people to share insight and find success. The platform empowers thousands of users every day to build life-changing businesses and create an online presence that reflects them. Content featured in this article first appeared on the Kajabi blog.