What is a marketing plan?
Well, to put it simply, a marketing plan is a roadmap or schedule of all the upcoming marketing strategies you’ve got planned. It’s the process of getting all those brilliant ideas out of your head and onto paper to help make sure you stay organized and on top of everything.
However, if you want to make sure your marketing plan is as effective and efficient as possible, then you need to take it to the next level… you need to make it strategic.
What is a strategic marketing plan?
Strategic planning in marketing means that you’re embedding the business goals and marketing objectives throughout the plan itself. Doing so involves many different steps (which we’ll go through in a bit), such as breaking down each stage, defining how you will measure success, and detailing how each strategy ladders up to achieving the overall business goal.
Why you should invest in strategic marketing planning
Your strategic marketing plan is your (not-so) secret weapon to achieving your business objectives with as little stress as possible. Benefits of it include:
- Helps identify opportunities, keep a competitive edge, and anticipate challenges
- Provides a structured approach with clear steps and deadlines to achieve goals easier
- Ensures everyone is on the same page and working towards a united goal
- Reduces redundancies (both in resource and budget) by making sure actions are targeted
Demystifying the different strategic documents
Depending on your role and experience, you’ve probably already come across a lot of different plans, and it can be hard to know how they all fit together.
Now that you know what a marketing plan is, let’s tackle some of the other main strategic documents and how they inform each other…
1. Business plan
The business plan is the first step as it outlines what the business plans to achieve, and the steps it’s going to take to meet these goals.
Once you know what the business is trying to achieve, you can then start planning your brand strategies and marketing strategies that are going to help you achieve these goals.
2. Brand strategy
The brand strategy is a gameplan of how you’re going to grow your brand, in order to grow your business. If you don’t already have a brand strategy then check out this blog (or even better, bring in a brand strategy agency to help!).
It will be informed by the business plan, because it’s the ‘how-to’ for achieving the outlined business goals. In turn it will also shape the marketing strategies because they should bring the brand strategy to life.
3. Marketing strategy
Your marketing strategy is your idea or campaign that you plan to run. They are the fruition of your brand strategy, and are designed to meet the goals set out in the business plan.
As your marketing plan is a roadmap of these strategies, they’re essentially the building blocks to your plan.
The nine steps to (successful) strategic planning in marketing
1. Review the business goals and objectives.
The business plan should be your go-to, but if this doesn’t exist then you can start by reflecting on the business mission (“what are we trying to do?”) and values.
2. Conduct market research.
Market research uncovers any key behaviors, trends, and competitor analysis that should feed into your plan. It can also help by highlighting your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT analysis).
3. Pinpoint your target audience.
This includes understanding who they are, their perceptions and their needs. The more you can gather at this stage, the better, as it’ll allow you to tailor your approach.
4. Set your SMART marketing goals.
Your marketing goals should be clearly aligned to the overall business goals, and to make them attainable we’d recommend you follow the SMART framework:
5. Create a marketing budget.
Understand budget parameters/constraints before you start making plans.
6. Plan your marketing strategies.
Decide on all the marketing strategies you want to implement and breakdown all the steps involved (including channels, content and tactics).
7. Craft a detailed schedule.
Imagine you were going on holiday and this marketing plan is your handover – everyone needs to know who’s doing what, exactly what each task involves and when they need to have done it by.
8. Implement your plan
Now it’s time to put your plan into place, and undertake your marketing strategies by following the detailed schedule you created. This is where you get to see your hard work come to life!
9. Monitor, Measure & Mature
Once your plan is in action and you need to continuously measure the success of it, as well as monitor for any watch outs and action necessary optimizations.
Types of marketing plans
So far, we’ve spoken about marketing plans as if there’s just one type, and that’s not true. Our nine steps to strategic planning can be applied to all kinds of marketing plans to boost their strategic rigor:
- Time based (annual or quarterly) – an overarching plan of all your marketing strategies
- Social Media – strategies to implement across social media platforms
- Content Marketing – focusing on the content that will be released (e.g. this blog!)
- New Product Launch – focusing on the launch of a new product in market
Quick-fire FAQS
Hopefully now we’ve given you the low-down, you’re feeling confident when it comes to strategic marketing plans. However, before we sign off, let’s quickly recap on some of the important stuff:
- What questions can I ask myself to get started?
- What are the business goals? (hint: look at the business plan!)
- Who is my target audience?
- What is my budget?
- What product launches do we have coming up?
2. What should my marketing plan include?
Your plan is bespoken to your business, so there’s no one right answer… but generally, you should include:
- Review of the market and competitor analysis
- Business goals and marketing objectives
- Target audience deep-dive
- Upcoming market strategies (including timelines)
- Budget & resource breakdown
3. What is crucial to a successful, strategic marketing plan?
Really all the above! Arguably though, the most important element to strategic planning in marketing is the setting of SMART goals. These will ensure you’re taking targeted action that aligns to your overall business goals, and allow for success to be measured and tracked.
The bottom line
So… there you have it, we’ve come to the end of our tour!
Strategic planning in marketing is the process of creating a roadmap of your planned marketing strategies. Although it can be daunting to get started, it’s crucial to your business achieving its goal – so definitely worth the investment.
But, don’t feel like you need to go it alone! Marketers often bring in brand strategy agency to help lighten the load, get further more efficiently, and get to even more strategic places than before.
Still have questions? Need a second brain? Drop us a line, we’re happy to help.
