Your company’s records of past customers are an absolute gold mine of information that can be easily overlooked. Use these records to figure out what types of customers defect, when, and why. If you can’t pinpoint why a customer abandoned you (from a complaint or a note from the salesperson, for example), try to contact the lost customer and ask him directly.

Your situation analysis identifies your weaknesses and threats, but it also identifies your strengths and opportunities. You need to take these findings and further clarify and build your marketing strategy around them in order to have the best chance for success.

Referring to model plans can help you as you develop your marketing plan. Unfortunately, most companies don’t release their plans – they rightly view them as trade secrets. Fortunately, a few authors have compiled plans or portions of them, so you can find some good published materials to work from.

In consumer marketing, it’s best if customers think you’re cool and your competitors aren’t. Because kids lead the trends in modern society, why not ask them what those trends are? Ask them simple questions like, “What will the next big thing be in [name your product or service here]?” Or try asking kids this great question: “What’s cool and what’s not cool this year?” Why?

Whether you’re looking at a letter, catalog, Web page, tear sheet, press release, or ad, you can improve the piece’s effectiveness by asking for reviews from a few customers, distributors, or others with knowledge of your business.

The main purpose of the management section of your marketing plan is simply to make sure that enough warm bodies are in the right places at the right times to get the work done. This section summarizes the main activities that you and your marketing team must perform in order to implement your marketing program.

Most marketers fail to mine their own databases for all the useful information those databases may contain. Study your customers with the goal of identifying three common traits that make them different or special. This goal helps you focus on what your ideal customer looks like so you can look for more of them.

A good plan is nothing without details, and a good marketing plan is no different. After outlining your marketing program (which I walk you through in the preceding section), you need to explain the details of how you plan to use each component in your program.

Okay, time to be creative. Ready, set, go. Come up with any good ideas yet? No? Okay, try again. Now do you have some good ideas? What? No? If you can’t be creative at will, don’t be alarmed. Most people face this problem, whether in or out of the marketing field.

Customer satisfaction changes with each new interaction between customer and product. If your product makes customers happy, they come back. If not, adios. Recruiting new customers costs anywhere from 4 to 20 times as much as retaining old ones (depending on your industry), so you can’t afford to lose customers — which means you can’t afford to dissatisfy them.