Targeting the right market for your business will ensure that your business gets the correct sales and turns an interest in your product or service. So why is a marketing plan so important? Well without one you will find it hard to persuade potential customers to buy your products if you don't understand what makes them tick.

Developing a marketing strategy is vital if you want your business to be a success. The focus of a marketing strategy is to ensure that products and services meet customer needs better than the competitors do and once you have established a connection with customers you must develop long-term and profitable relationships with them. It is also important that your marketing strategy is flexible so that it can be changed in order to respond to your customer demands.

In order for your business to have the best chance of success you need to know more about your customers needs than your competitors do. You also need to monitor the effectiveness of your marketing strategy and to make any adjustments that are required to maintain success. It is also important to ensure that once your marketing strategy has been wrote that you do not over look the monitoring of it as this will be a key element when it comes to evaluating how effective your marketing strategy has been.

One of the key elements of a successful marketing strategy is the acknowledgement that you're existing and potential customers will fall into particular groups or segments, characterised by their "needs". By placing them into different groups you will be able to identify and address these needs a lot more successfully than your competitors. You will also be able to fulfil their needs a lot easier.

When it comes to writing your marketing strategy you should start by identifying your S.W.O.T (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats). It is important that you do this in an honest and thought provoking manner. Examples of these strengths could be:

• Personal and flexible customer service

• Special features or benefits that your businesses products or services offer customers

• Specialist skills

Some examples of the weaknesses a business could suffer from include:

• Limited financial resources

• Lack of an established reputation

• Inefficient accounting systems

All of the above are merely just examples and although you might feel it looks unprofessional admitting to your flaws it is better to do so as it shows what you aim to improve on and demonstrates the honesty of your business.Within the opportunity section of your marketing strategy you should outline and explain aspects such as an increased demand of the product that you are selling and expending your business to being online.

You also need to include possible threats to your business as the last part of your S.W.O.T aspect of your marketing strategy. These threats can include aspects such as new competitors and a downturn in economy.

You also need to address possible pitfalls for your business within your marketing strategy and outline what you should avoid such as making assumptions about what your customers want, ignoring the competition and trying to compete on price alone as well as trying to expand your business too quickly. All of these aspects could possibly cause your business to fail.

Once you have wrote your marketing strategy you need to ensure that you stick to it and apply it to the marketing and sales of your business.