Marketing without a plan is a quick way to burn through scarce early stage resources and waste valuable time. Whether you are launching a single product or a full new brand, building and implementing a market plan is critical aligning scarce resources to your desired goals. In this lesson, we outline the important of a marketing plan and the key elements of that plan to give you the best chance of optimizing your marketing spending.

Overview

A marketing plan certainly will be different industry by industry and based on your company type, but some of the basic elements remain the same. Your plan should include:

• Executive Summary
• Situation Analysis
• Goals
• Marketing Strategy
• Budget
• Brand Messaging
• Target Audience
• Marketing Tactics
• Implementation
• Exhibits

Executive Summary

The Executive Summary gives an overview of the key elements of the marketing plan, with a specific focus on product, pricing, promotion, and placement. It describes the offering the company is making in the marketing plan which also includes people (staff), process (of providing a service), physical evidence (which makes the service more tangible to potential customers), and philosophy (whereby the product reflects the philosophy of the organization).

Many readers use the executive summary to determine whether the entire plan is worth reading. This is your time to impress. Don’t overlook its importance.

Situation Analysis

The situation analysis examines all the aspects that may impact sales of a specific company. It looks at both the macro-environmental factors that affect many firms within the environment and the micro-environmental factors that specifically affect the firm.

• Purpose. The purpose of the situation analysis is to indicate the organizational and product position of the company, as well as the overall survival of the business within the environment. Companies must be able to provide a summary of opportunities and problems that may be encountered within the environment to gauge an understanding of their own capabilities within the market.
• Understanding Competition. Take a moment to evaluate where your company sits in the competitive landscape. Are you the new kid on the block, or are you the industry leader? This should influence your plans for the year heavily. Understanding your market position can help you identify your opportunity. This starts with knowing who your competitors are, what they’re saying, and what makes you different.Knowing and confirming your differentiators is crucial when you’re creating your marketing plan. If you know that you’re the best solution for mid-market companies, or that you’re struggling in competition with your competitors, you’ll be able to focus more time and energy around becoming a leader in your industry. If you have the chance, talk with some of your customers about their experience with your company and your product. Getting honest feedback can help you adapt your marketing strategy to target the right audience with the right message.
• Evaluate Past Efforts. Part of this analysis is to look at the past. What happened (or didn’t happen) in the last year is a great indicator of what you should try to accomplish in the coming year. Did you make your lead goals? Did your sales team make their sales goals? Did your company make its revenue goals? These questions aren’t going to give you specifics about what your plan for the coming year should entail, but it will give you a good grasp on what is attainable, and where your efforts for the coming year should be focused.
• Talk to Other Teams. Take some time to have conversations with other teams, especially sales, about how the year went. Does your sales team feel like they were light on leads, or that the leads weren’t properly qualified? Did your company experience a high churn rate? The overall health of the company should be marketing’s number one goal, and the only way to plan for that is to take the time to get a pulse on the current health of your company.

Evaluating what you have done in the past is a great way to improve what you do in the future.

Goals

A good strategy always starts with goals. When you have a clear idea about where you want to go, it’s easier to get there. These key goals – that align with your company’s initiatives – will give guidance to the rest of the things you’d like to accomplish throughout the year. So begin your marketing strategy by outlining what you would like to accomplish this year. List your basic marketing objectives, which may include a few of the following:

• Build brand awareness
• Increase sales
• Expand into a new market
• Increase profit
• Target new customers
• Develop brand affinity and loyalty
• Grow digital presence
• Launch new products or services
• Grow market share

Once you pinpoint the general goals you want to focus on, set clear objectives for each goal. Use SMART goal planning to develop each of your plans, so they are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Time-bound

Shape the rest of your marketing strategy using this initial list of goals.

Once you establish your overall goals, you can then set some sub-goals that keep you on track each day. For example:

• Key Goal: Develop deeper relationships with our customers to reduce customer churn and increase customer lifetime value.
  • Sub goal 1: Develop five pieces of solid content for our customers
  • Sub goal 2: Create an onboarding nurture campaign using email and product newsletters
  • Sub goal 3: Create a social campaign around current customers and top users
  • Sub goal 4: Rank as a leader on G2 Crowd for customer reviews

This element of the marketing plan states what the organization plans to achieve through the implementation of the marketing plan.

Marketing Strategy

It’s all good and well to know what needs to be done and the tools you have to accomplish them, but without a strategy explaining how you are going to use these resources to reach your goals, you may find yourself running around in circles and running out of resources before the goals are reached. The strategy that is set forth in the plan must be strong enough to compel investors to put money into the company or project.

In order for businesses to win market share and stay relevant they need to consider many types of marketing strategies. Each marketing strategy can communicate to a target market the benefits and features of a product.

Marketing strategies can also communicate an overall value to their customers. In many cases, this is the core of building equity or good will in your target markets. Apple, for example, has invested in creating commercials for television, billboards, and magazines that showcase their products in such a way that their customers feel an affinity towards Apple’s products.

Budget

Next, focus on the investment you would like to make in your marketing. As you set your marketing budget, consider a few factors.

• What industry are you in? How much are your typical competitors spending, and what do you need to spend to compete?
• Should you outsource SEO, or any other part of your strategy to free up resources? Do you have the budget to do so?
• What do you want to achieve? Do you need to spend more than usual if you want to grow or expand?
• What is your total yearly revenue? What percentage of revenue do you want to allocate to marketing?

Go through each of your marketing activities and determine “how much money do we need to achieve our marketing goals?”

Brand Messaging

Messaging is the heartbeat of marketing. Creating intelligent, educated content helps you build a solid relationship with your prospects, and can help turn your prospects into happy customers – and is something that should be key to your marketing plan.

• Mission statement
• Brand promise
• Tone and voice
• Unique selling propositions
• Key terms

As you revise or write these sections, consider the three perspectives that matter to your brand.

• Customer Perspective. What you present to potential buyers, clients, and customers.
• Internal Perspective. What you present to your internal team, and what drives their work.
• Market Perspective. What differentiates your offerings and makes you stand out in your industry.

Shape your brand messaging to connect on those three levels.

Target Audience

Good marketing does not attempt to reach all people; it’s targeted to connect with a few specific and defined audiences. As you create your marketing strategy, revise or write target audience descriptions, so they are concrete and clear.

Define your target audience’s demographic and psychographic characteristics as it relates to:

• Age
• Location
• Occupation
• Marital or family status
• Gender
• Ethnic background
• Income level
• Education level
• Personality
• Lifestyle
• Behavior
• Worldview
• Attitudes
• Values
• Interests and hobbies

Then, take it one step further and create a few buyer personas (stories about fictional characters who are your ideal customers) based on the demographics.

Knowing specifics about what makes a great customer for your company is a great place to start when figuring out who your marketing efforts should be targeting. Ideal customer profiles usually include firmographic and demographic information like company size, industry, and common buyer titles. Knowing your customers allows you to communicate better with them, ultimately boosting retention rates and the opportunity for upsell and cross-sell.

While reworking your buyer personas, also focus on developing your buyer’s journey. Outline what your target customer is thinking during each of the following stages.

• Awareness. What is your customer experiencing as they become aware of a problem they are having? What are their pain points?
• Consideration. What is your customer doing while they are considering solutions for their problem?
• Decision. How does your customer make the final decision before a purchase? What concerns, thoughts, and processes guide them?

Your content should not only attract new buyers, but also nurture current relationships you’ve already created. In order to address your customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey, it’s important to identify your audience for every piece of content. Is all of your content top-of-funnel, neglecting those who have already made contact but aren’t yet ready to purchase? Or, are you light on the content that might attract new buyers to your site? Evaluating these things will make it clear what should be on the top of list for content creation next year. If you need some guidance on creating a content plan, check out this 4-step content planning workbook.

Marketing Tactics

Once you have the framework, perspective, and guidelines to direct your marketing strategy, start to outline your plans. The types of marketing strategy you choose may relate to traditional, digital, or content marketing. Divide your marketing budget between the strategies that will work best for your goals and business.

The marketing strategy provides the overall picture of how the stated goals are to be met. The tactical program gets down to specifics. It details the day-to-day activities in the major marketing areas that will be performed to fulfill the strategy and achieve the stated goals. Here are the details to consider with respect to the usual marketing tactics:

• Traditional Marketing. Decide where your business could benefit from traditional marketing channels like:
  • Billboards
  • Print ads
  • Direct mail
  • Radio and television ads
  • Cold-calling
  • Events
  • Speaking engagements
  • Networking
• Digital Marketing. Identify where you are lacking or need to improve as it relates to:
  • Website and online presence
  • Social media
  • SEO
  • Paid search
  • Email marketing
  • Retargeting
• Content Marketing. While content marketing is connected to digital marketing, you can separate it into its own category. As you think about your content marketing plans, consider if you want to focus on:
  • Copy content creation (blogging, articles, e-books, etc.)
  • Multimedia content creation (video, slideshows, infographics, etc.)
  • Newsletters
  • Guest posts
  • Content distribution and promotion

This information helps you:

• Identify topics that are relevant to your industry and audience, which can inspire ideas for content on your site
• Gauge the competition for keywords in your industry, so you know which keywords to avoid due to high competition.
• Find guest blogging sites and opportunities by identifying keyword gaps on blogs that will be likely to accept guest posts on the topic.

Implementation

Implementation involves presenting an action plan which lists the specific actions that need to be taken to reach the goal of the marketing plan. It also lists which department or person in the organization is responsible for carrying out the action. Make a calendar with important milestones. Creating a strict calendar for the coming year can be a tricky, so it’s best to schedule out what you can, but be ready to roll with the punches. Start with the major things, like new product launches, upcoming announcements, or events you know you’ll be attending this year. Identify all the assets you’ll need such as emails, press releases, or supporting content. From there, you can make a workback plan to facilitate manageable lead times. If one of your goals is to create a major asset for each quarter, start scheduling out drafts and factor in time for editing and revisions.

Exhibits

Exhibits will appear at the end of your marketing plan and will provide the details that back up what you stated in the main part of your marketing plan.

Nobody knows what next year might have in store. You might have to change direction or shift your plans significantly, but starting with a plan and schedule will help you achieve the goals you set out to accomplish in the new year.

Example

Here is an example of how these elements come together, This examples does not have all of the elements listed above but should give you an idea of how the plan comes together.

• Goal. Increase sales revenue by 25% by the End of the Year
• Objectives.
  • Increase Awareness of our website to Target Audience (TA) by 100% by the end of the year
  • Increase Traffic To Website by 50% compared with last year
  • Increase Repeat Purchases by 10% compared with last year
  • Increase Average Order Value from £50 to £55 this month
• Example Strategy.
  • Engage Target Audience at key touch points in their day when receptive to brand messaging
  • Drive traffic from new unique visitors to your website
  • Encourage Repeat Purchases from Existing Customers
  • Increase Average Order Value from within the cart
• Example Tactics.
  
  • Advertising and Content.
    • Run TV ads targeted at TA in the middle of the day
    • Run Facebook Advertising at lunchtimes based around similar interests
    • Acquire Coverage in National Magazines targeted at TA using PR
    • Run Online Banner Advertising on XYZ sites targeted at TA in the evenings
    • Sponsor Local Sporting Events
    • Create content around the shopping & lifestyle needs of your customers
  • Online.
    • Ensure website URL is featured in TV ads
    • Add URL to Twitter Bio
    • Start 10+ conversations per day with TA on Twitter
    • Lead Industry based Tweet chats on Twitter, encouraging influencers to join in
    • Create video based responses embedded in well SEO’d blog posts with transcripts
    • Share video blog posts to people on Twitter (monitoring for people asking Qs and responding)
  • Outreach.
    • Email existing customers with referral % deal for new customers
    • Print vouchers added to all orders sent out this month
    • Competition: invite friends to enter mechanism (opt-in email data capture)
  • Promotions.
    • Add attractive deals to the cart automatically (worth around 10% of transaction value)
    • Increase the Free Delivery Threshold from $35 to $45
    • Add gift wrapping options to the cart (with images of premium gift packaging)
    • Auto opt-in to higher cost delivery / up-sells

Obviously this is only a quick overview of what your strategy and tactics may look like for an overly simplistic goal but should help you set your strategies to differentiate your business.

Source: Boundless. “Marketing Plan Elements.” Boundless Marketing Boundless, 26 May. 2016. Retrieved 06 Feb. 2017 from https://www.boundless.com/marketing/textbooks/boun…