Completing Your Marketing Plan

As you look back on your trip through this manual, you will discover that you have now completed your marketing plan. You started by choosing and defining your market segment. The last questions you asked were:

The last form to fill out will be your total marketing plan. Go back through your work; make any improvements you see that need to be made. Use the form on the following page for your final copy.

Finally, you probably have to "sell" your marketing plan to a higher authority — your administrator, your board, your coordinator. Improve your chances for success by role playing the meeting with the decision maker(s), anticipating the objections and "shortcircuiting" them, and emphasizing the advantages to the agency or organization. Supportive colleagues will often help in this endeavor. Ask them to "play" the decision maker(s) in the role play. Often they will get so involved that the real presentation will seem like child's play. If role playing seems silly to you, just remember the Scout's motto: Be Prepared! We hope developing your marketing campaign has been fun for you. The marketing of adult literacy services to prospective adult learners is indeed a challenge. Your sensitivity to the needs, desires, fears and uncertainties of the target population and your particular market segment should make the job easier.

We hope that the marketing plan will help recruit the clients you want to come to your program. However, this plan does become "one more thing" to add to your "to do" list, which is already lengthy. But if all members of your community who need adult literacy services are represented in your program, then your image in the community will be strong, respected, and worthy of support. And the community's support is critical to the success of your program. We hope this helps. Good luck!