Building a Marketing Plan
What is a Marketing Plan & Does Your Business Need One
By definition, a marketing plan is a document outlining your businesses goals as it relates to advertising and marketing efforts for the coming year or quarter. This business document would outline how you propose to spend your budget, have SMART goals and describe the marketing mix intended to be used to attain goals.
Every presentation of your marketing plan may look different but your information should always be the same. If you are a start-up maybe you are presenting to investors, if you are a director of marketing you might be presenting to your CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) if you are CMO you might be presenting to the rest of the C-suit and so on.
So the question is, does every business need a marketing plan? The only answer here is yes, absolutely.
The process of creating a marketing plan may initially feel overwhelming but it does not have to be when you’ve identified the purpose and its execution. Organizing your plan will inevitably give you a higher sense of control and direction, leading to productivity and abundance.
Why is a marketing plan so important?
This is probably not the first article you have read about the importance of a marketing plan but it might be the most important. It’s importance boils down to three main points:
#1 Alignment
A cohesive marketing plan will help to align all aspects of your business. The main purpose of marketing to generate demand. Aligning others (or departments) to this goal is good and smart business.
#2 Measurable Results
Whether it may be a nimble team, solo entrepreneur or a department of hundreds, the main mistake many marketers make is to rely solely on instinct or a ‘feeling’. Instinct is a powerful thing to have because its the spark that ignites creativity. Yet, it is imperative that we support our creative and instincts with qualitative metrics of success or ‘key performance indicators’ (KPIs). KPIs are outlined within your marketing plan, making it an invaluable point of reference to understand your wins and losses. Without it, your business may be the victim of a vicious cycle where errors are repeated and attribution is unaccounted for.
#3 Optimization
Optimization is the continuous monitorization of an approach measured against certain variables to achieve higher than status quo results. Drafting a marketing plan early on allows businesses to understand what works and what doesn't. An opportunity not to miss is the optimization of what works while dropping any lagging approaches- quickly. The ‘quickly’ part is important. You cannot identify whats helping you win without monitoring your all your approaches to attain your KPIs. This is how you keep and achieve a competitive advantage.
5 Step Process to Creating a Marketing Plan
What is the process of creating a marketing plan? A lot of our best practices arise from experience and lessons learned. I have drafted many marketing plans throughout my career and here is my advice on the process of creating something everyone can stand behind.
1. Gather all the necessary information
Consider yourself an architect and survey the land before designing or building your masterpiece. This step is all about learning and opening up all lines of communication for knowledge gathering. Places to take information include analytic platforms currently used to monitor marketing performance. Agencies that are contracted to help, current sales members, employees who are customer facing, and the group of people who are responsible for moving the company forward. You want to know, from their perspective, what has worked and what hasn’t. This is really an eye-opening exercise because you will be able to find themes and string together key nuggets of information.
2. Align with key stakeholders
A stakeholder is someone who has a vested interest in the progress and success of the company. Under this definition, this could be your employees, investors, or people you report to. I suggest starting top down. What are the expectations of investors and managing partners (or executives)? What are the company goals you need to support and build strategies around?
3. Draft and share with key stakeholders
You've surveyed the land, heard key stakeholders perspective, now its time for you to organize your strategy. Define your audience, marketing mix, and goals. There are many components to a marketing plan, Forbes widely popular article gives 15. Once you have drafted your first final copy, share it with key stakeholders who you have a good rapport with and or the person you report to. During this step, allow your plan to be critiqued and don’t be shy about defending your plan as well. This collaboration will inevitably give you something you will need in the future: a core base of support and advocacy.
4. Release and Indoctrinate within organization
You have your final plan, it has supporters and you’ve refined it. Time to present it to the rest of the organization and like any other marketing plan you have developed a strategy for; make it a campaign. Allow for your plan to be alive and visible for anyone to see. Create mantras for your team and other departments. There is nothing more important in a process than to have it be indoctrinated. To have people not only believe in your plan but act in accordance to it.
5. Align. Align. Realign.
The biggest pitfall for many leaders is to think their plan is definitive. Things change, that is the only constant, therefore you must be ready to change as well. Resilience is power. Aligning the objective of your marketing plan is not a one-time exercise, keep a pulse on the overall company success and direction. Fine-tune, abort, double-down, pivot. Those are all real strategies to not getting stuck.
Get Started
Finally, If you are asking the proper questions and following a process that is sustainable to your business, there is no way you can fail at drafting, finalizing and indoctrinating your marketing plan. The only thing you can do wrong in building a marketing plan of your own in isolation. Isolating yourself from your teammates or from the data available to you will hinder how successful your plan will be.
If you are consistent with building out your plans yearly the power of knowledge builds with every new plan. A well-documented plan means it can serve as a frame of reference for the future. So, go ahead. Get started!