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Your marketing plan is a map. It guides your activities and provides you with benchmarks and goals throughout the year. Your plan should be adaptable and allow for a change in direction if needed. Your marketing plan is a pathway to achieving growth, and keeping it current is an investment in your success. The best strategy for working with an adaptable marketing plan is to review it regularly. A stale or outdated marketing action plan is one of the most common reasons for steady declines in website traffic and lead generation. Why is it important to review your marketing plan each year?You may find that your plan has unrealistic expectations. For example, if your plan says to publish two original blogs per week, but you’re barely able to keep up with one blog per week, a change needs to be made in your priorities or in the plan. Your company should be able to rely on the plan for a framework of marketing activities. How to Review Your Marketing PlanReviewing your plan can be done as often as you need. We recommend setting regular review sessions that include key decision-makers for your company. Here are five steps for successfully reviewing your plan. 1. Compare Your Plan to YoY (Year-Over-Year) Performance TrendsReview the items in your marketing plan one at a time and make note of any areas that need to be discussed. Be sure to review the budget, timelines, and milestones or benchmarks that you established to measure success. Did you meet the benchmarks outlined in your plan? If not, what is the reason they weren’t met? If an extraneous circumstance was the reason a benchmark wasn’t met, then it might not be necessary to alter the plan. However, if your workload, experience, or task prioritization led to missing the benchmark, consider changing it for something that is more realistic for your business. 2. Update Your Plan to Accommodate Unanticipated ChangesYou’ll rarely find that 100% of your original plan was working as expected. Once you’ve established what’s working and what’s not, it’s time to make some changes. Update your plan with the changes that you and other key decision-makers at your company have established. This could include changing the frequency of publishing content, establishing a new approval or communication process for certain tasks, or increasing or decreasing the budget based on actual results. 3. Set New Benchmarks to Achieve Your Target ROIWhat will success look like with these plan changes? How will you know if you’re on track to hit your goals? Establishing new benchmarks will not only help keep your plan on track for success, but it will also create accountability for all members of your team. If possible, save these benchmarks somewhere visible to all team members. Having a constant reminder of how success will be measured is a great way to encourage consistent performance from your team. 4. Implement Your New Marketing Plan StrategicallyNow that the changes and benchmarks have been established, you can begin implementing the updated plan. This might require you to adjust your budget for certain campaigns, begin working on new campaigns, or assign new tasks to your team. Communication will be your greatest ally in ensuring the successful implementation of your new plan. Let your team know why certain items were changed, how the new benchmarks will be measured, and what the team’s specific role is in achieving success for the marketing plan. 5. Schedule Time to Review Your Marketing PlanIt can be easy to put off reviewing the marketing plan. That’s why we recommend scheduling your next review session as part of the review process. By scheduling a future review session on your calendar, you’ll be more likely to stick with it. If you need help reviewing or even starting a marketing plan, reach out to us. We do it for ourselves and our clients and are happy to help where we can!
Marketing strategy and planning set the foundation for everything you do. Doing it right enables you to focus your time and budget on the right marketing programs to reach your goals. On this pageVideo: Writing a marketing strategy and planWatch our video to help you understand why a marketing strategy is the key to what your business stands for. Topics include:
Transcript of video Effective marketing should be:
Marketing strategy and planning set the foundation for everything you do. Start with your marketing strategy, then develop a marketing plan to make it real. Your marketing strategy outlines the why and the what:
It sets out your long-term marketing approach. Your marketing plan describes the how and the when. It:
Having a clear marketing strategy and plan delivers significant benefits for your business. It will help to:
Templates for developing your marketing strategy and planChoose one of these downloadable templates to customise and complete:
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Develop your marketing strategy in 6 stepsYour marketing approach influences the way you run your business, so it's important to consult your internal team and external partners. As you work your way through the steps, capture your insights and findings in the relevant templates. Know your marketStart by capturing insights about your industry and customers. Market research is an essential part of your marketing strategy. It:
There are 3 main ways to do research:
You can do the research yourself or hire an external agency to carry out the research. Find out more about researching your market. Know your businessNext, you need an honest appraisal of your business from an internal perspective. A SWOT analysis can be a useful way to assess where you stand in your market relative to competitors. It highlights the major obstacles and business drivers and provides the direction necessary to:
This diagnostic tool can help you uncover foundational insights to guide your marketing strategy. Learn more about SWOT analysis and complete the template. Based on your business plan and goals, the next step will be to define marketing objectives that are:
These objectives will typically have a financial or communication focus and may cover different areas, such as:
It's important to be as clear as possible so you can effectively measure the outcomes. Make sure that each of your marketing objectives meet the SMART criteria:
To measure and report your progress towards your marketing objectives, you should identify and define key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs are quantifiable metrics (indicators that can be measured) that are meaningful for your business, such as:
Read more about tracking your digital performance. You'll know when your marketing objectives are right when they:
Review regularlyReview and adjust your marketing objectives based on your progress. A classic and effective marketing framework is commonly known as STP:
To become a customer-focused business, you need to find ways to get and use insights into your market. As a starting point, summarise the findings from any customer research you've done. This will reveal:
Based on this analysis, follow these steps to define your target segments:
Your business most likely operates in a competitive market. Customers are typically spoilt for choice. That's why it's essential to establish your brand positioning in a way that achieves sustainable competitive advantage. As part of your marketing strategy, you should maintain a profile of your key competitors. You can:
If you don't know where to start, find out how to do market research. Find information about each of your key competitors':
Use this information to help identify what sets your business apart.
Brand positioning is much more than just your name or logo. This is your business purpose. It's why you exist. It’s about making sure that your communications, culture and customer experience are all working together in harmony. The ambition is to build a distinctive brand. This is about what you want to:
It will guide everything you do and don't do. Work through the guidelines to help build your business brand. It's also beneficial to define your value proposition. In simple terms, it's a statement of the benefits you provide in exchange for payment. Think of this like a win-win for your business and your customers. It explains:
Your value proposition will look closely at the problems you are solving for customers. Remember to look at your value proposition in terms of the current situation and the ideal future. This will help you to prioritise future improvements. Discover more about how you can bring your value proposition to life. You can identify your high-priority marketing programs based on your:
Think about these as your strategic themes. For example, imagine you're running an innovative online store. Based on your analysis of the current situation and assessment of future opportunities, you might identify 4 marketing programs you need to drive growth:
These work packages will then direct your marketing actions and determine where you'll focus your marketing efforts. Be focused and consistent. If you're doing something outside of these themes, ask yourself why. Checklist: from strategy to planningMake sure you've completed the 6 steps discussed above before moving onto your marketing plan:
Translate your strategy into your marketing planOnce you have a marketing strategy, you can extend it into a marketing plan. The marketing plan reflects and builds on your thinking. It's your roadmap to get where you want to be. A marketing plan:
It's about the execution of:
A structured and documented marketing plan has many benefits. It:
Don't try to do everything at once. Adopt a phased approach based on the skills, time and staff you have available. Your marketing plan will be implemented repeatedly and change over time. There are different stages to this process:
To successfully achieve your marketing strategy, you'll need to:
Remember: your tactics should address the needs and wants of your customers. If you need inspiration, you can:
Follow this 3-step process to guide your thinking:
Repeat this process for each of your high-priority marketing programs. For example, you may have identified the need to increase awareness of 1 of your products amongst young adults aged 18 to 25 who live within 10km of your business. An appropriate tactic could be to implement a geo-targeted marketing campaign:
Don't be scared to test and learn. Test some ideas on friendly customers, partners and employees. Using the right tactics over time will connect with your target segments and ultimately improve your sales results. Once you've worked through your tactics for each marketing program, you need to turn this into an action plan. The action plan must capture all the actions you need to perform. For each marketing tactic, list the specific steps required in as much detail as possible. (You can download and use the action plan template below to guide you through the process.) This can include the following fields:
Regularly refer to, and update, your action plan. This will help you to:
Great marketing requires great people. The people in your business will determine how successful your marketing is. They need to be involved throughout the process and believe in what they are doing. Your marketing approach will also inform your sales techniques. Marketing and sales need to work together. Link your marketing KPIs and sales targets. Make sure you have assigned responsibility for each of the actions in your action plan. This is the process that allows you to track and report on your marketing performance and make the necessary changes if needed. Based on your business plan, you have developed a set of SMART marketing objectives. These will most likely be based on the following outcomes:
Within each of your high-priority marketing programs, you have assigned specific KPIs for each tactic. For example, these KPIs could be:
Before you run your marketing programs, you need to know how you'll measure and evaluate the results. A review of each activity will then help to:
Continue to review and revise your marketing. For example, on a quarterly basis, you should ask:
Marketing action plan templateDownload and complete the marketing action plan template. This plan also forms part of your larger marketing strategy and plan. Implement the marketing planTo implement your marketing plan successfully, you need to confirm you have everything you need to implement it. Resources and expertiseAsk yourself these questions about your skills and capacity:
Depending on the type of business and your marketing strategy, you may need to prioritise training and development. For example, with an online business, this could include website and social media management. Communication and collaborationYour staff need to be engaged and committed to make your marketing efforts to work.
Also consider...
Why is it necessary to regularly adjust a businesses marketing plan the more successful the plan is the longer a business can take to adjust to the market?Either way, a regular update to the marketing plan allows for new analysis informed by new market experience, opportunities to realign plans with other functions, and the chance to inform others within the marketing function so that the team can learn and evolve together.
Why is it important to review your marketing plan regularly?Your regular marketing reviews will keep you focussed on improving your skills and changing your tactics as necessary. Watching your data will teach you new lessons about marketing, your target audience and the effectiveness of your branding and approach.
How important is the marketing plan in the success of the business?With a well-designed marketing plan, you can design more effective promotions and impactful campaigns, reach your customers with targeted advertising, and track your business success with analytics. Without one, you might as well throw your marketing budget down a well and hope for the best.
Why is it important in the business to have a marketing strategy marketing goals and marketing objectives?Why is a marketing strategy important? Put simply, a marketing strategy sets out your business goals, including who your ideal customers are and how you intend to reach them. It's your plan of action and the blueprint to the marketing activity you will do in the coming months and years to grow your business.
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