Marketing Aquaculture Products — 1

Creating a Marketing
Plan
In the Marketing Your Product section we
touched on what would go into our marketing
plan. So now we have to take each of those
points and get them down on paper. It does
not have to be fi nished in the fi rst draft , just get
ideas on paper and get them organized. You
can mull them over and perfect the plan as it
evolves.
We introduced the Marketing Your Product
section with the “7P”’s of marketing: product,
pricing, place, promotion, packaging,
positioning and people; and stated that the
most important unifying concept is market
relevance. It doesn’t really matter how unique
your product or service is, unless its value is
tied to a perceived benefi t. Your customers
need to know if it will solve their problem or
make them money. For this reason, market
relevance is a fundamental dimension of your
business and defi nes your vision for your
48 — Marketing Aquaculture Products
products and audience.
Your vision begins simply enough with a
mission statement. Create the statement by
encapsulating that idea in a sentence or two.
For example, an internet service may say, “Create
a single place on the Internet that connects
all people with anything or anyone they need.”
A small-town dairy may say, “Create direct-toconsumer
supreme quality cheese from locally
pastured grass-fed cows.” Th e later statement
identifi es a locally-produced product that
requires exceptional preparation and quality
control, produced from well-cared-for animals.
Defi ne your business and product’s value
propositions and you have defi ned its market
relevance.
At the end of the day, market relevance needs
to be tied directly to return on investment
(ROI). Start by developing a projection of