The 7 Key Components of a Successful Marketing Plan
As a business owner or marketer, it is important to change with the times. The developments in the last few months have likely disrupted the marketing plans you had in place for the year. And, with the expectation that social distancing practices will last for a bit longer, we can predict the disruption will continue for the foreseeable future. Now is a good time to re-evaluate your marketing efforts and create a strategic plan for moving forward under these new circumstances.
When developing your plan, we recommend focusing on the next 2-4 months. While it is typical for marketing plans to span for longer periods of time, things are currently changing at such a rapid pace, we recommend focusing on a shorter time period and then re-evaluating after 60-90 days.
We understand you’re juggling many tasks and time is of the essence. We’ve outlined the seven essential components of a strategic marketing plan that you can use as a guide to help get you started and ensure you’ve covered your bases.
Business Goals/Objectives: It is important to start here, as these goals will help guide the rest of your plan. Not to be confused with marketing goals, these are your higher-level motivations for creating a marketing plan. Think about what your business wants to accomplish and the direction in which it wants to move/grow. You may find these are the same goals you had prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and now you need to think about new ways to approach them. Or, you may find that the pandemic has brought the need for new short- or long-term goals for your company. A popular example is overall sales goals for your business.
Marketing Goals: How is marketing going to help you reach your business goals and what are you hoping to achieve to that end? It is important that these goals be measurable and attainable. An example would be using social media channels to drive a certain percentage of your web traffic.
General Strategies: These are the unmeasurable and general steps that you will take in order to reach your marketing goals. Specific ways you will implement these steps will be defined in the “Tactics” section below. So, think a little broadly. For example, if you had a marketing goal to increase website traffic through social media channels, a general strategy would be to create compelling and regularly scheduled content for each of your social channels.
Audiences: Who are you trying to attract/reach? It is important to think about your target demographics: their ages, genders, locations, interests, etc. It is okay to define multiple audience segments if that serves your overall goals. For example, some businesses may be trying to reach both a consumer audience and a business audience.
Tactics: These are your ideas! Tactics are the actions and campaigns you will implement to support your strategies and objectives. So, if your marketing goal was to increase web traffic through social media channels, and your general strategy was to create compelling content, a corresponding tactic would define the specific campaigns you will launch with the name of the campaign, the content you plan to generate, the dates you plan to post the content on social channels, the social channels you will use, and more.
Budget: According to Gartner’s “Annual CMO Spend Survey,” in 2018-2019, marketing budgets for companies averaged 11.2% of company revenue. When determining your budget, it can also be helpful to research what the average budget is for other businesses like yours, as averages can vary significantly by industry.
Timeline: What steps will you take in the coming weeks, months and years? As we mentioned previously, your timeline and plan should be reflective of the evolving nature of our situation. So, rather than making plans for the next 1-2 years, you may need to now shift to plans that focus on the next 1-6 months. Your timeline should also impact your marketing goals and strategies, as you want to make sure you are setting goals that are achievable in a shorter time span.
If you have questions about how to craft an updated marketing plan in response to COVID-19, reach out to us. We can help you determine the best way to move forward with your business and marketing goals.
Wondering how to approach posting on social media during this time? Check out this recent blog post.
