In the early marketing courses in college, they teach the 4 P's of marketing: Product,
Price,
Place, and
Promotion.
I believe that the 4 M's in marketing plan are a better place to focus.
Market - who your target customer is
Message - what you want to communicate to them
Media - the tools you will use to communicate to your customers (with a schedule and budget)
Measurement - what you hope to accomplish and tracking how well it worked.
Last night I spoke to a room full of business owners about developing their marketing strategy. As business owners, they are all wearing many hats. I'm sure that finding the time to create a full marketing strategy is a challenge. If they don't have a good background in marketing, it may be even more difficult.
To make it easier in the 90 minutes we had together, I helped walk them through their 4M's and also touched on each of the 4 P's of marketing.
