Marketing is something that every business has to do if it wants to thrive in a competitive market. Getting your name out there, building your brand, and capturing audiences’ attention gives you the power to make your product or services viable.
Despite the need for marketing, did you know that approximately 50% of small businesses don’t have a marketing plan? According to a study from Outbound Engine that was reported via Search Engine Journal, business owners often fail to build a marketing plan due to other stresses such as limited budgets or time. Failing to create a marketing plan is a mistake, though, as good marketing can be done in a minimal amount of time and gain you the maximal results you want.
As a part of your marketing planning process, you need to work with the departments within your business to build a marketing plan. Your plan will go over detailed strategies and organize your processes. With this plan, you’ll be able to track and measure the success of your marketing campaign.
Therefore, it is crucial to understand that marketing’s job is never done. It is a process of continuous motion, requiring constant innovation and adaptation. As Beth Comstock, former CMO and Vice Chair of GE, aptly put it, “Marketing’s job is never done. It’s about perpetual motion. We must continue to innovate every day.“
The Significance of Marketing Planning
While businesses can do well without making significant marketing efforts, none has ever thrived without it. Even something as simple as a word-of-mouth referral is a kind of marketing, showing how marketing goes hand-in-hand with successful business processes.
The problem with lackluster marketing planning is any marketing you do will be chaotic. It may cost more than it should, and you’re unlikely to get the kinds of results you would with an effective marketing plan in place.
A marketing plan helps make your life easier by paving the way for sales. It creates a streamlined method of marketing and breaks down how you’re going to get your products or services seen and used.
The best part about a marketing plan is that it helps you stay consistent; consistency is crucial when building a brand.
Navigating the Five Stages of Marketing Planning
Now that you know the importance of a marketing plan, you need to understand the five stages of marketing planning.
These stages need to happen annually, at the very least, but you can also create a plan for each of your marketing campaigns that is under a year long. Here are the routine stages you’ll complete while working on a marketing plan and what to expect as you work through them.
Your business summary
Start your marketing process by creating a business summary. This summary will state where your business is located, your mission statement, and other details about your marketing team. It’s essential to put this summary together because it guarantees that all the information about your marketing team is in one place.
Your business initiatives
Business initiatives are your business goals, and you should have a deep understanding of your goals before embarking on any marketing journey. Write an initiative that states your goal and what you’ll do to achieve it.
An example of this would be to write a description of what you expect to work on in the next six to 12 months. You should decide on a goal during that time and determine what success looks like. Is it more views on your website? Is it to have a better relationship with customers? Decide before you start your campaign.
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT)
The next stage is where you’ll consider your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, also called SWOT. SWOT analysis allows you to identify the ways your business already thrives and can identify any risks or threats to your growth. You’ll look at weaknesses and opportunities and make a plan to excel.
You’ll need to analyze competitive companies and market research to learn more about your target audience. Don’t forget to figure out what your business does well, and be sure to identify opportunities to make conversions.
However, it’s important to remember, as Richie Norton points out, that:
“SWOT is cool, but strategic thinkers know that there is a point which:
- Strengths become weaknesses
- Weaknesses become strengths
- Opportunities become threats
- Threats become opportunities
Strategic entrepreneurs and leaders find the greatest insights hiding behind SWOT.”
This perspective can add depth to your analysis and help you uncover hidden insights.
Identifying and analyzing competitors
Either as a part of the SWOT analysis or on its own, it’s essential to get to know your competitors. For example, if you’re a retailer selling clothing that suits those between 15 and 18, you’ll want to compare your company to others in that same niche.
Look at the products or services you’re directly competing with. Also, look at how you can compete via SEO or your website. What is the competitor doing that you aren’t? If you can figure out how to improve on their marketing tactics, you can position your own business to excel.
Getting to know your customers
The final stage of marketing is getting to know your customers, so you know what they want and how they want to be treated. Some segments of customers want to watch videos. Others follow influencers. Some are easier to reach through CTV commercials, and others are on social media like Facebook or X.
Not only do you need to think about who your customers are and gather demographic information, but you also need to get to know their behaviors. When you can understand how your customer base thinks, you’re more likely to be able to get them to convert.
Crafting a Comprehensive Marketing Plan
Your next step is to write your marketing plan. There are eight steps you’ll need to take to do so. They include the following.
- Start by identifying your business’s mission. You need to know what your business’s mission statement is and how your marketing is going to be designed to support your business’s end goals. Once you know the mission, you’ll develop your own “marketing mission statement” to match.
- Set your key performance indicators (KPIs) for your marketing efforts. Which performance indicators will you measure to make sure your marketing plan stays on track?
- Get to know who you want to attract as customers. Once you determine the demographics of those you want to attract, you can set up unique buyer personas. Those buyer personas can help guide marketing strategy.
- Decide what kind of content you’re going to make. You should also identify how much content you’ll make and any specific distribution channels you want to use.
- Be clear about what you’re not interested in doing during this marketing plan. Skipping TikTok? Avoiding Google Ads? Not aiming at parents or people with children? List those exceptions as a part of your marketing plan.
- Determine how much you want to spend. Your marketing budget has a significant impact on what you can or cannot do with your marketing efforts. In your marketing plan, ensure you create line items for each expense and determine what you’ll spend to avoid blowing your budget.
- Write out each person’s role within the plan. What will your employees do? Make it clear what their responsibilities are.
- Finally, get to know the competition and be clear about how you will beat their campaigns. For example, if a competitor has an excellent keyword strategy, you may want to build one of your own with some alternative keywords that they haven’t taken advantage of. Analyze what they’re doing, so you can do it better.
Doing these things will help you create a strong marketing plan and campaign.
You don’t have to create this plan very often, but consider doing so with each unique campaign or, if you set all the campaigns up similarly, at least once annually.
Access the free Marketing Planning Bundle from Rock Content.
Pro Tips: Executing Your Marketing Plan Successfully
After you’ve had the time to create your marketing plan, the next step is to execute it. At this point, each person who has a role to play in the marketing plan will have been identified and will be ready to get started.
It’s at this time that you’ll choose the tools and channels you want to use to start your campaign. Your team will put together the content and research SEO and trending keywords to ensure your campaign gets started off right.
Once your campaign launches, the appropriate team members will monitor the key KPIs and analyze your marketing data. They’ll look at conversions, as well as other aspects of the marketing funnel, to see where the campaign can be improved and how it’s successful.
Having a Marketing Plan Is Just the First Step Toward Success
Creating a marketing plan is a great step toward building success in the digital marketplace. With a good plan in place, you’ll be prepared to create, manage, and analyze a marketing campaign while staying on budget and being able to see actual results.
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