Marketing for your company can be overwhelming and intimidating. When there’s a lot to do, people make a list, set deadlines, and start knocking items off one by one. But wait, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. According to a recent survey, marketers who plan their projects are 356% more likely to report success.
An effective marketing plan digs into the details, such as:
Writing blog articles and sharing social media content is a part of content marketing, but what bigger purpose do these serve? With a marketing plan in place, you’ll know what business goals these tactics help you achieve.
Here’s everything you need to create a marketing strategy and plan that drives results!
Before you start any journey, you need to know where you’re going. That’s where your goals and objectives come in:
Your marketing goals should link back to your company’s overall goals. These are larger achievements expressed in terms of awareness, conversion rates, sales dollars, units sold, or marketing share. Objectives are measurable, time-based targets that can help you fulfill your long-term goals.
When outlining your objectives, keep it S.M.A.R.T:
Here are a few examples of S.M.A.R.T objectives:
Defining your goals and objectives will keep you focused as you lay out the rest of your marketing plan.
In a recent survey, nearly half of the businesses surveyed use digital marketing tactics without having an overall plan in place. If you can’t tie your actions back to a measurable goal, such as ROI, how do you know they’re working?
Strategies pinpoint the reason why you’re doing something and your overall method to reach your goals. As you build out your strategies, ask yourself how you intend to accomplish your objectives and think in broad terms. For example, let’s say you want to grow website traffic by 15% in Q3. Your strategy, in this case, might be to increase your organic search rankings by focusing on inbound marketing techniques that generate interest and drive targeted traffic back to your site.
Now that you have a strategy, you’ll need to create a list of tactics to explain how you’re going to achieve your goals.
While strategies answer why you’re doing something, tactics get specific by pinpointing how.
Tactics are specific, strategic actions that help you achieve your marketing goals. As you build your marketing plan, you also need to consider the traditional and digital tactics you intend to use. Let’s take a look at some of your assets:
Robust marketing plans use these various types of media in tandem to form a holistic path toward goal achievement. For example, you can use Google ads with a search engine optimized blog to build brand awareness for a specific product. At the same time, you can also guest blog about the benefits of your product, then link to your website at the end of the post.
You’re probably using a list of marketing tactics already, such as:
The list keeps going, but you get the idea. It’s not enough to go on a content creation spree. Instead, each of these tactics should roll up to a strategy, objective, and goal. What kind of content can you create to help you achieve your goals?
Personalization can help you connect heart to heart with your customers.
So you know what you need (your tactics), why you need it (your strategies), and what you need it for (your goals and objectives). Now you need to determine who your clients are for each product or service you sell.
To start, you need to segment your target audience. You can do this by breaking your broader audience into buyer personas (or customer profiles) based on demographics, behaviors, interests, and lifestyle choices.
From there, you can create personalized content that appeals to each of your customers and helps you better relate to them.
A competitor analysis can help you learn more about what your customers already respond to.
Do you know your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats? A SWOT analysis can help you learn more about your business, industry, and customers. This information is essential to your marketing plan’s overall success.
It’s also important to know who your competitors are and what they’re doing. That’s where a competitor analysis can help. To start one, focus on your competition’s strengths and weaknesses along with the specific tactics they’re using to speak to the market.
By including details from these reports in your marketing plan, you can find potential gaps and roadblocks in your plan.
Analytics can help you optimize your marketing strategy’s overall performance.
Once you’ve structured your plan, put it in motion! Watch it work, but keep a close eye on the results.
Use analytics to help you optimize your marketing plan’s overall performance. Creating KPIs based on the SMART objectives you set earlier will ensure your strategies remain aligned with your goals. As you move forward with your new marketing plan, keep an eye on your metrics, and don’t be afraid to pivot if your company’s ROI isn’t where you expect it to be.
Your company’s marketing plan won’t look like anyone else’s because your business isn’t like anyone else’s. Putting together a marketing plan isn’t as easy as plucking one off the internet and keying it in for your company. Instead, it’s vital to produce a plan that reflects your company’s overall business goals.
Whether you want to increase your revenue, attract new clients, or gain brand awareness, a well-thought-out plan can help you succeed.