Newsletter: Proper Prior Planning...May 9, 2008 —
Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance :: Creating a Marketing Plan
Ask yourself: if you were planning an extensive cross-country vacation and had several key stops to make, wouldn’t you bring a road map along? Essentially, a marketing plan is a roadmap for your business – and if you don’t have one, this is likely the first reason for un-attained sales goals, fragmented branding and more.
Developing your marketing plan doesn’t have to be arduous. Baby steps are commendable – a general plan is better than no plan at all. While a lot of the elements below are things you should be able to determine on your own, it is highly suggested that you enlist the help of a professional marketing firm in identifying and defining your target audience, and developing marketing strategies and tactics. In fact, most marketing firms will be very cautious of working with you if you come to them with a tick-list of tactics that you’ve developed, asking them to simply implement.
None-the-less, keep the following six items in mind and you’ll be well on your way to completing a successful marketing plan.
Situation Analysis This section should address four main issues:
1. Product Summary It is always helpful to take some time to describe your product in detail. While you might be well aware of every nuance, someone following you, or someone tasked with implementing the marketing plan might not. As you should be creating a new marketing plan every year, you should also include any temporary product details that would affect the overall marketing of you product. For a developer, this might include details of the year’s development timeline – something that will be very different next year when preparing your marketing plan, but still affects significantly the direction of your marketing this year.
2. Brand Summary and Key Messages While your brand summary should change very little (unless you’re undergoing a re-launch), like the product summary, it’s still good to write it all down. The key messages you plan to use throughout your marketing are vital to the success of your plan. The key messages should always relate back to the consistency of your brand while addressing the unique marketing goals of the year ahead. Don’t confuse this section with a creative brief or creative platform. Your marketing firm can help you find a way to creatively say and implement your key messages; identifying them is what is important at this juncture.
3. Competitive Review Take a look around and identify who/what your biggest competition is for the year. You should take some time to research your competitors; try to find out who they are marketing to, what their key messages are, etc. The last thing you want to do is overlook this step and then put something in the marketplace that is similar to what your biggest rival is doing. Always try to stay one step ahead.
4. Contingencies Plans are nice, but we all know that sometimes a wrench gets thrown into the works. Try to identify as many of those possible “wrenches” ahead of time to save in headache later.
Many times, a SWOT analysis is included as part of the situation analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Each of these items should be addressed; whether it’s done in a SWOT analysis or as part of the above itemized areas isn’t as important.
Goals Marketing goals should be clearly identified up front. Goals should be measurable and the means by which to measure them should be identified in your plan. When setting your goals, remember to choose goals that are effected by marketing – making sure the office dishwasher is emptied every day this year isn’t a marketing goal.
Target Audience You know what you want to say, now who are you going to say it to? This section should include a demographic and psychographic profile of your primary customer. And, if applicable, a geographic profile as well.
Strategy + Tactics This is where the pedal hits the metal, so to speak. This will likely be the lengthiest section of your plan and should include great detail on how you plan to achieve your goals and convey your key messages to your target audience. So, what’s the difference between strategy and tactics? Consider strategy as solutions for achieving your goals, while tactics define exactly how those solutions will be implemented. Here’s a simplified example:
• Marketing Goal: Increase homesite sales by 10% year-over-year
• Marketing Strategy (likely one of many prescribed for the above goal): Create product awareness within local and regional markets
• Marketing Tactic (likely one of many prescribed for the above strategy): Develop a series of visually engaging direct response pieces that convey the sense of connection that owning a home in our community brings. Pieces will be mailed quarterly to existing database, supplemented by targeted list purchases.
Budget In the most detailed way possible, all expected expenditures need to be planned and accounted for. Regular budget updates must be managed throughout the year; this will help determine areas for improvement and will help calculate return and effectiveness. When putting your marketing budget together, don’t overlook a contingency fund. A healthy cushion is 10% of your total budget , but more or less can be determined by reviewing the contingencies you outline in your situation analysis. By reserving this money, it leaves you room to take advantage of unplanned opportunities or absorb unplanned expenditures.
Implementation Timeline Once you’ve identified your goals, strategy and tactics, you should be able to develop an implementation timeline. This part is crucial to marketing success because when life gets busy it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks. By having a timeline in place at the start, you stand a much better chance of implementing everything planned and therefore achieving your goals for the year.
Now, hopefully all of you are reading this saying “check…marketing plan done.” However, we know that’s probably not the case; hence our decision to cover this topic. If you’re reading this and feeling overwhelmed, then you could probably benefit from hiring a marketing firm to help you with this process. It’s what we do every day.
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