The steps to creating an effective marketing plan begin with identifying who you are going to be targeting, what you are going to spend, and how many sales you are going to receive as a result of your efforts. By identifying this information in the initial stages of your market plan development, you will significantly increase your return on investment and substantially increase your sales. Below is a step by step process to help you lay the framework for your own marketing plan:

Step 1) Identify your budget.

Identify how much you are planning to spend on your marketing endeavors in order to maximize your investment. How much are you planning to spend on your marketing? How many prospects are you planning to reach, and how many sales do you expect to close? Include your time investment in this analysis as well. Many inexpensive marketing tools take an enormous amount of time and subsequently have a significant cost.

Step 2) Identify your ideal customer.

In order to target your customer effectively, you must know what they look like. This process is generally known as stick figuring and identifies the key traits of your ideal customer. Who are they? What do they do for a living? What do they read? Where do they shop? What do they value? How do they entertain themselves? Where do they spend their time? What does their family look like? What is their income level? Answer these questions as specifically as possible to determine the best way to target them.

Step 3) Identify the medium.

List all of the possible mediums to touch your customer. Arrange the list from the most specific way to target the customer to the broadest way to touch your prospect. On the same list, list the prices per piece and the specific price per prospect. This will give you an idea of where to best spend your money and where you will receive the greatest return on investment.

Step 4) Allocate your budget.

Identify the top five mediums that touch your prospects in a cost effective manner and allocate 80% of your budget across those pieces. Reserve the remaining 20% to use for unique or targeted follow-up marketing pieces.

Step 5) Schedule your campaigns

Schedule each campaign to touch customers multiple times through different mediums. Plan some overlap on when each piece hits each prospect to maximize awareness of your services, but draw out the periodicity of the total campaign as long as possible to maximize the duration of awareness. A good rule of thumb is to touch a prospect at least once per week. Multiplicity of your message is also beneficial. However, do not touch a prospect with the same piece more than three times as resistance to your medium and message may develop.

Step 6) Track your results

Continually track your campaigns and where each prospect hears and acts on your message. With this information, you can know which portions of your campaign are effective and which parts need to be modified.

When developing your marketing plan, some general rules of thumb are useful to help manage your expectations. As you develop your budget, mediums and plan, keep in mind the following widely accepted marketing statistics:

* Typical response rates from print advertising and direct mail are between 0.5% and 1.5%

* Generally, you will need to touch a prospect six times before they recognize your brand and eight times before they take action

* Always include a call to action in all of your pieces and a way to track the response from each piece.

* In every piece, always include multiple methods of contact, i.e. internet, telephone, fax, mail, etc.

* A prospect will typically spend three seconds on your piece before moving to something else. Make your communication simple and attention grabbing.

* Be consistent in your message across all marketing pieces to create awareness of your brand and services.