Why create a chemical marketing plan?
Why should you create a marketing plan for your chemical business. A marketing plan helps you to take a more scientific approach to marketing. It requires you to:
- Make sure your spending aligns with your business goals
- Measure the effectiveness of your campaigns at the end of the year
- Set a realistic budget—for your marketing efforts
- Make your efforts more efficient—by setting a goal
- Consciously choose tactics—then measure their effectiveness
- Measure the overall effectiveness—of your marketing strategies, year over year
How do you create a marketing plan?
The five steps to creating a good marketing plan for a chemical business include:
Step #1— Choose a target audience
When you’re ready to find new customers for your raw materials or ingredient, the first question to ask yourself is:
Who buys our product? Knowing which companies, industries, and job roles buy your products will ultimately help you choose the right industrial marketing tactics.
Step #2— Define your goals
Your next step is to write specific, measurable goals for the coming year. What do you want to achieve with your marketing efforts over the next 12 months?
Step #3— Create a cost-effective marketing plan
Next, create a budget for your chemical marketing plan. This budget will guide which marketing tactics to choose.
Step #4— Choose your marketing tactics
Finally, you’ll want to add some specific marketing tactics to your plan. Look for a good mix of inbound and outbound strategies.
This may require some experimentation from year to year, as you measure your success (step #5)—and see which tactics work best for your business.
Inbound marketing—allows new customers to “discover” your business and products through web content—such as your website, social media, blogs, articles, white papers
Outbound marketing—includes more “traditional” forms of manufacturing marketing—such as cold calling, trade shows, print ads, digital ads, emails, newsletters
Step #5—Measure your success
Check on your progress every three months to find out:
1. How much new business has each marketing tactic earned so far?
2. How much progress has been made toward your overall goal (in revenue, new customers, product sold, etc.)?
3. How much money have you spent on each marketing tactic?
4. How much of the total marketing budget have you spent so far?
See which marketing tactics work well, and which need to be changed. Then share your progress with staff—and use the learnings specific to your chemical business to revise your marketing plan for next year.