Next to your business plan, a marketing plan can be the most impactful driving force in your business’ growth.
Why? While your business plan outlines your company’s mission and goals, your marketing plan outlines marketing actions that help drive those goals.
A marketing plan can serve as a strategic roadmap for how your business differentiates itself from competitors, communicates its brand identity and mission, and achieves your business objectives.
A well-defined marketing plan can also mean the difference between your business stagnating and achieving exponential growth. So, if you’ve not yet developed a marketing plan, it’s time to do so.
In this post, we’ll outline the importance of having a marketing plan and elements to include within your marketing plan.
Why is a Marketing Plan Important?
As we’ve said, your marketing plan is your business’ roadmap. Your marketing plan should outline your business’ marketing objectives (increase website traffic, brand awareness, lead generation, etc.). It should also outline marketing strategies (inbound/outbound, digital, social media and/or content marketing, etc.) to be taken.
A marketing plan ensures that all departments are aligned on the focus of your marketing efforts and strategies to be taken. This eliminates any tension or miscommunication between team members and departments regarding the focus of marketing.
Finally, a marketing plan is a way to measure the performance of marketing strategies, enabling you to adjust where and when needed to ensure continued success.
8 Elements of an Effective Marketing Plan
If you’re not sure where to start, here are some key elements you should include in your marketing plan:
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The Executive Summary
An executive summary is a brief overview of your overall marketing plan. This section outlines your brand’s high-level objectives and a quick roadmap to how you will achieve those goals.
The executive summary only outlines your marketing goals and plans. Don’t let yourself get wrapped up in providing a large-scale overview of your business goals, too.
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Company Overview & Mission
This section simply outlines specific information about your business. This includes your business name, location, mission statement and any marketing professionals whose roles should be mentioned.
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Target Market
Your target audience is your ideal buyer. The better you know your ideal buyer, the more effectively you can target your marketing.
You can get to know your ideal buyer by getting to know your existing loyal customers. Look at their demographics, needs, desires, and pain points, and ask about their experiences with your services or product. Compile your findings to develop a detailed profile of your ideal buyer that you can reference to target your marketing.
Your business will likely need to target more than one audience. Develop personas for different marketing objectives and even for buyers at various stages of your marketing funnel.
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Competitive Analysis
There’s more to just studying your customers; you also need to study your competitors.
Part of your market analysis should be understanding where your business is in the market compared to your competitors. You can find this information by conducting a competitor analysis.
A competitive analysis means compiling a list of top competitors and evaluating their marketing strategies next to your own. This can be a great way to gain insights into industry trends you may be missing, or identifying underserved areas of marketing in the industry that you can focus on.
You can also use the SWOT analysis, which is a process of identifying your business’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to assess how well your business is doing in the current market compared to others.
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Market Research
Make sure your marketing plan is backed by research, so that you have a viable direction to take in achieving your goals.
For example, what platforms do your customers tend to use most? What are some recurring behaviors they display throughout the buyer journey? What strategies are your competitors using to attract clients who match your buyer persona? What are the latest marketing trends in your industry?
Implementing data and findings to these questions will impact how well your marketing plan performs.
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Marketing Goals
Based on the information you’ve gathered, it’s time to outline your marketing goals.
To better set yourself up for success, use goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound – or SMART. You should also outline how you will measure the performance of your strategies by defining your key performance indicators, or KPIs.
For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic, you might write, “I will increase website traffic by 10% within the next year by implementing on-page SEO strategies. I will review web analytics on a quarterly basis and optimize strategies based on indicated performance.”
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Marketing Strategy
This section of your marketing plan outlines specific marketing strategies and tactics you will use to achieve your goals. This will include the five P’s of marketing:
- Product: What you are selling and why it is of value to customers.
- Price: How much your product/service will cost based on quality, demand and competition.
- Place: The print and digital platforms on which you will market your product/service.
- People: Who you are targeting within your marketing efforts.
- Promotion: How you are bringing awareness around your product/service to target audiences.
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Marketing Budget
The final element of your marketing plan is your marketing budget. Developing a marketing budget will help ensure the success of achieving the goals outlined in your overall marketing plan.
First, define the dollar amount you will allocate toward your marketing plan for the next year (or X timeframe). Then, allocate those dollars toward each goal or strategy. It can be beneficial to allocate the most dollars toward the areas that have already proven most effective to give you a quick win and long-term success.
It can be difficult to immediately get your budget’s dollar allocations accurate. Stay agile, and know this can be adjusted over time as needed. Each quarter, evaluate the performance of your marketing plan based on your budget, and adjust as needed to enhance performance over the remaining quarters.
See Your Business Win
Once you’ve developed your marketing plan, use it to guide your everyday marketing efforts and decisions. Also know that your plan is fluid, and evaluate it frequently to ensure your strategies remain effective and aligned with your business’ current objectives.
Developing a marketing plan is a complex process and one that takes time, but once you’ve implemented it, you can enjoy seeing your business win.
