An effective marketing plan has a lot in common with climbing a mountain.
- Where are we now? Where is our brand’s today’s – what is the current situation?
- Which way are we going? The direction must align the business’ vision and mission.
- How will we get there? What marketing strategies, tactics, plans, goals & objectives will need to be used to hit the target?
The business plan includes issues like operations, staffing, business structure, and financing.
The marketing plan is a subset of the business plan. It outlines the strategic roadmap to help you achieve goals like brand awareness, engagement, lead generation, and sales. Strategy frames the plan.
A strategy is what we want to achieve, like being the low-cost provider (Walmart).
A strategic approach might be to offer a disruptive challenge to traveling from point A to B. (Uber)
A strategy might be to become the technology platform for in-home fitness. (Peloton).
Peak Performance
A simple mountain climbing metaphor helps.
Assume the companies goal is to reach the peak of a mountain. Then, the marketing plan is a roadmap to getting there. Getting to the top of the hill is the strategic direction.
How you get there, requires experimentation with various routes (or tactics). You may have to cross a few rivers, scale a few cliffs and even go around part of the mountain to reach the top. The equipment needed, like ropes, food suppliers, and tents, is part of the tactics deployed for success.
A marketing plan gives you the map you need for the coming year or two to help you reach the summit. It should include the estimated costs and a clear statement of how you will measure success with specific metrics and KPI’s.
Complexity versus Simplicity
Some companies prefer marketing plans that are comprehensive, rich in detail, and, if dropped, could break your foot. It is as if the thicker and heavier the program, the more effective.
I once worked for a company that took eighteen months to put together a marketing plan. By the time we started to implement it, the market had changed, and we had to start from scratch.
We thought the job was to write a marketing plan. The real job was creating a roadmap that could quickly get us started on our journey.
There is nothing wrong with doing a lot of prework to help you articulate your plans. From SWOT analysis to PEST reviews and beyond, there are many ways of reviewing a market and describing it in your project. MBA graduates love these analytical tools.
I believe in the more straightforward approach to a situation that requires the same pre-analysis but distills the strategy and marketing plans into a short one or two-page document so that key players in the organization understand the approach.
I’d rather have twenty people read two-pages and understand the direction, then to have three people sit through a two hundred page slide deck.
The Situation
In a few paragraphs, describe the situation that your business finds itself. It helps if you can base your analysis on data and insights gleaned from that research.
For example, one company I know was trying to do too many things in too many vertical markets. They dabbled in markets with little focus.
Their situational analysis captured their confusion, frustration, and concern.
It was an honest assessment of the moment. The owners were brutally frank in the situational analysis, recognizing that their business was stuck and spread too thin. It didn’t take volumes to tell this story, just a few paragraphs. This company also knew that only one of several markets they entered had double-digit growth and expected to grow even more in the coming few years.
The Vision
The next few paragraphs captured where they’d like to be in a year or two. They decided that if they could achieve a 20% share of one of their core markets, they would be in an improved financial position.
Thus, their vision was to be one of the top three players in their category and to go from 3% to 20% market share as measured through syndicated data they purchase. To become successful, they knew that they had to become more disciplined and make a bet on one vertical segment. Their north star was a 20% share of one specific vertical market, and they understood to get there, will require some investment, a shift in direction, and the willingness to say no to some business that didn’t fit their goals.
The Strategy
The strategy section recognized that they needed to try several tactical actions to try and achieve the 20% market share in one crucial and growing vertical. That is to say, the strategy was to meet a 20% market share in one essential market segment, as measured by a syndicated report used in their industry.
The tactics outlined paths to reach that specific goal.
The strategy requires precision in understanding how a market organizes itself, clarity, and narrowness of targeting and how you will position your offering versus the competition. At this point, you need to express your “only we“ statement that helps guide your unique value.
(We are the only option within X market that is cheaper, faster, quicker, different, blue, digital, subscription-based, federally approved, etc.) In this case, the client chose not only to focus on one market but to be the only subscription-based offering in the category.
The Tactics
The tactics you choose need to help you achieve stepping stones toward reaching your goal. No single tactic will do it all, but among the range of choices, a marketing plan outlines what you’ll do and how much it might cost to prove its effectiveness. Each decision requires spending, clear testing parameters, and openness to shift midstream.
Tactics also have to align with a customer’s journey – think AIDA – attention, interest, desire, and action. Each tactic pushes one of these buttons.
You might choose one or several tactical activities. Here are just a handful of marketing tactics to consider:
Tactics for Consideration
- Public Relations & Reputation Management – help you get your message and story in front of potential customers through earned media.
- Event Marketing like sports, music, entertainment – helps you create an emotional bond and connection with customers in the real world. Create a live experience.
- Social media or community management – harness the power of a community-engaged with your brand.
- Market Research – understanding unaided and aided brand awareness. Gain insights to help refine your message, your target, and even your approach.
- Digital marketing – can involve email and video outbound efforts as well as paid advertising.
- Co-branding – an opportunity to partner with someone who brings an equally strong asset to the marketing effort – Ralph Lauren design and higher-end Fords
- Partnerships/alliances -access to tangential audiences
- Licensing – leveraging equities or giving rights to properties. Batman in movies or toys
- Paid advertising – FaceBook, magazine, billboard. Paid awareness.
- PPC – getting found through a search by consumers/customers.
- Advertorial/Native ads – a mix of earned/unearned media to tell your story.
- Sponsorship event, podcast, webinar – bring your brand to life in other channels.
- Endorsement/influencer (ad, email, web) – leverage influencers, personalities to tell your story.
- Referral (like on social media to share) – harnesses the power of connection through digital engagement.
- Live streaming – (event, content creation) – bringing something digital to life via a live event.
- Personalization – (through game, other) – making products and services special, bespoke programs that have one person in mind.
- Contests – create energy and excitement around new product launches, new ventures.
How to Get Started Creating an Effective Marketing Plan
In summary, my approach to this process is to have someone who has an understanding of the business and marketing challenges, put something in writing addressing the situation, vision, and strategy sections. Share this initial draft with a core team and bring them together to debate what’s on paper.
Then redraft it, with the input from the team, refining, clarifying, and shifting to make the words align with the conversation. And share it again.
If you have a consensus from your team, then start to flesh out the tactical approaches that may help you achieve your marketing goals. If you are launching a new product and want to gain awareness, there are multiple tactics available. Once you know a budget, you can begin to determine how to invest those funds as fuel for your marketing vehicle.
Finally, an effective marketing plan should be well-thought-out but straightforward and easy to understand. They need clarity and details about budgets. Most importantly, an effective marketing plan should be your compass for the coming year. I would also limit the planning to a short time frame like one month. Get it done in thirty days or you’ll be working on it forever.
A marketing plan is your roadmap to your journey. Start quickly, and adjust along the path.
Need help crafting a marketing plan? If you like a more straightforward approach that is nimble and agile, let’s talk. You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com. Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Try my new chat feature on my site if you have a quick question.
Photo by Charlotte Karlsen on Unsplash
Photo by Anastasia Petrova on Unsplash
