I get asked almost daily “How do you create a marketing plan?” I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and how very few companies actually have a well-designed marketing plan. Larger companies typically do a better job of developing plans, but the small companies often use the, “Let’s try this approach!”. Do you have a well conceived out marketing plan in place?
There are two ways to create a marketing plan: The right way, and the wrong way. The wrong way is using the approach where you try a little bit of everything to see if anything works. I’ll admit… I’ve been guilty of this approach in the past. I felt if I sling enough “stuff” on the wall, some of it would stick. Ultimately, this is an ineffective and expensive way to gain new customers.
The right way is to have a vision. Before doing anything, you need to evaluate your brand. What does your brand stand for? Do you even have a brand? If not, what do you want your customers to know about you? How are you different from the competition? Why should customers call you? What makes you unique?
Before any marketing plan can be started, you need to first outline your goals. Then tie those goals directly to the plan. Create goals that relate to your strategic objective, and develop strategies and tactics that will assist you in attaining your marketing goals. Your goals should be very specific, and you should be able to measure them and track your progress.
No marketing plan is complete without a budget. You need to know how much you can spend when developing your tactics. If your plan exceeds your budget, you’re going to need a new plan! You also need to make sure you have a realistic budget that can generate the results you want to achieve! And you’re going to need a back-up plan if you run out of money or the results create a larger demand than expected. In other words, be prepared to be flexible.
Once your plan is in place, you need to set a baseline and measure its progress. What specifics are you looking for? Are you going to measure sales increase? If so, how are you going to tie the increase to the individual marketing campaign? Will you measure results by the number of responses or leads to the call to action in a particular ad? You must measure your baseline before enacting a new marketing plan because without it you can’t measure progress.
A method you might want to include is the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. Look at your company and determine your strengths compared to the competitors in your marketplace. What do you do well? What weaknesses do have that you need to do better? What opportunities are out there for you capitalize? Do you know of any threats to your business or trade?
We must—and I repeat, we must—review the marketing you have used in the past and look at the effectiveness of each tactic, strategy, and piece. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel—but you also don’t want to duplicate efforts of campaigns that didn’t work as well as you had planned. You also have to make sure you didn’t pull the plug too early.