So You Have a Marketing Strategy, But Do You Have a Plan?

I know that as business owners or senior marketing professionals you are pulled in multiple directions when it comes to what marketing you should be doing to help grow your business.

You are bombarded by web guys selling SEO, email marketing guys selling email packages, and Hubspot selling, well, Hubspot. So which one should you choose and why?

I understand the need to see marketing activities happen, especially in the SMB market, but the expression “penny wise and pound foolish” comes to mind as tactics not tied to a plan or a strategy fail time and time again.

Before you invest thousands of dollars on executing tactics, it is crucial to have a marketing strategy and a marketing plan in place.

Would it surprise you to know that according to the BDB, 54% of business owners have difficulty developing and executing a marketing plan?

A second step to the development of a strategy is the creation of a marketing plan, sometimes referred to as a tactical plan. I have outlined below the key aspects of a marketing plan that will answer the question of what a marketing plan will do for your business:

1. Tie into your marketing strategy
2. Outline overall themes or areas of focus for each month or quarter, including events and trade shows
3. Break the areas of focus down further to tie into your objectives: e.g trade show: to increase sales on product/service X by 10%
4. Clearly state your objective: lead generation, awareness, introduce new service/product
5. Type of media: e.g. social media, video, direct mail, web, online advertising, call-outs, etc.
6. Details frequency: e.g 3 videos, one a month for 3 months
7. Details of integration: e.g. video and call-outs, direct mail and video and call-outs
8. Placement of media: TV, radio, which apps, which websites, which trade pubs, etc.
9. Measurement: How can you measure the success of each campaign e.g. leads coming from the website, number of times video was watched on YouTube, the number of Likes on FB, etc.

To reach your marketing goals, I recommend starting with a strategy and following through with a plan before moving on to the execution stage. Having defined deliverables will identify the road map your need to reach your marketing goals.

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