7 steps to creating an effective marketing plan for businesses of all sizes
A marketing plan is a bit like a job description for your company. Everyone should have one, but they’re often not fit for purpose, out of date, and reviewed infrequently...
Research has shown that businesses with plans succeed, outperform competitors, and retain staff, more than those with no plan.
Without a plan there’s no direction for the company or its employees, decisions can be uninformed, opportunities can be missed and threats can damage or destroy the business.
Whether you are looking at creating a traditional marketing plan or a multichannel digital marketing plan, we've got resources to help you.
Free marketing plan template aimed at small businesses
In this article, Annmarie Hanlon recommends 7 simple steps for structuring a classic marketing plan. But for an SME or SMB, you need a little more detail about prioritizing your investment of time and…
Digital marketing is more important now than ever. My recommendations on the challenges and opportunities for growth
Digital marketing is deceptively easy if you take the deliberately simple definition from my book Digital Marketing:Strategy, Implementation and Practice where I define Digital Marketing as:
"Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital media, data and technology".
But in reality, digital marketing is a tough challenge since many businesses know how vital digital and mobile channels are today for acquiring and retaining customers. Yet the research shared below shows that many businesses don't have an integrated plan to support digital transformation and business growth based on engaging their audiences effectively online.
In this article, I will explain why a digital marketing strategy is essential for all businesses. If you're looking for an introduction to the scope of digital marketing and what should be included in a plan, see my post explaining What is Digital Marketing.
Regardless of the type…
Discover how a customer experience strategy that enhances digital experiences across all touchpoints can help build brand loyalty and improve ROI
In today’s fast-paced digital world, providing a seamless customer experience strategy is no longer a luxury but a necessity. As consumers have more options than ever on where, when, and how to interact with brands, ensuring a consistent and positive digital experience can significantly impact your business's growth and competitiveness.
It’s easy to forget just how many touchpoints your business may have. The Smart Insights customer lifecycle visual highlights just some of the many paid, owned, and earned media omnichannel options available today to communicate with prospects and customers. There’s a lot!
The diverse array of channels highlights the amount of avenues we need to effectively manage to create effective customer experience,…
Our recommended process and tools to help you grow your marketing career with strategic skill development
As marketers, we understand how challenging it can be to keep all your plates spinning. You’re trying to manage your day job, while staying up to date with all the latest industry and platform changes, while making sure you are fed and watered and clean and getting enough sleep to keep your brain in gear. Not to mention remembering Auntie Wendy’s birthday and making sure the dog has had enough exercise. With all this going on, setting time to learn marketing skills is often pushed to the back of your priority list. Over time, you drop the plate.
There are a few reasons for this. From speaking to marketers over the years, Continuous Professional Development (CPD), feels like something you should be doing, but often gets ‘saved for later’, while we try to keep…
To make sure your social media campaign is as successful as possible, follow our 7 steps to plan and structure your campaign strategy
If you have an upcoming marketing campaign for a new product feature, or a holiday promotion that you want to capitalize on, or maybe you’re releasing a brand-new product, you will want to plan a social media marketing campaign to help spread the word.
But in order to make sure your social media campaign strategy is as successful as possible, you need to plan in advance and consider how it integrates with other strategies.
How to structure an integrated social media campaign plan
Ideally, the social elements of the campaign will be part of a broader marketing campaign plan - our companion post and members' marketing campaign plan template recommend you structure your campaign using these key campaign elements:
Campaign goals and tracking.
Campaign insight and targeting.
Key campaign…
What are the essential parts of a multichannel marketing plan template?
Multichannel marketing, or omnichannel marketing, is the process of utilizing online and offline marketing communications channels to target and engage with your customers.
As outlined in our popular Learning Path module, structure a plan using the RACE Planning framework, the purpose of a multichannel marketing strategy is to empower marketers and managers to plan, manage and optimize the resources needed to achieve business sales targets. The timeframe is typically annual but potentially longer-term, such as 18 months to three years.
Examples of communications channels could include, for example:
Websites
Physical stores
Catalogs
E-mail marketing
TV
Text messaging
Blogging
Direct mail
The goal is to deliver leads and sales targets for defined products and services, which can apply to an organization as a whole, or a single market if there are multiple markets and product or service categories.
An effective omnichannel approach to marketing…
Audit your digital media effectiveness to build stronger campaigns and an efficient marketing funnel
Reviewing your use of digital media is a crucial starting point for creating or optimizing your digital marketing strategy. But how do you tune in and prioritize what's working, and what isn't, without getting lost in vanity metrics?
At Smart Insights we recommend using VQVC to consolidate and streamline how you measure your digital media. This mnemonic shows how volume, quality, value, and cost help you pull out different elements of your marketing activities. Read on to find out more about VQVC and other important digital media planning techniques
Moreover, do you really understand how and when each of your key marketing communications is being received by your target audience? Our RACE Framework helps hundreds of thousands of marketers around the globe track and optimize their key digital media, to get the best results possible, without breaking the bank.…
Are you practicing always-on marketing, and if not, why not?
In the pre-digital era, marketing activities were planned in campaign ‘bursts’ around new product launches and promotions. My belief is that to be effective, digital marketing needs a change in mindset so businesses invest sufficient time and budget into continuously optimizing ‘always-on’ activities which can be used in an integrated way to maximise visibility and conversion through the customer lifecycle.
What is always-on marketing?
Always-on marketing: A working definition
Always-on marketing means a planned approach to scheduling and optimizing continuous marketing activities which support customer acquisition and retention throughout the customer lifecycle.
Consider the main types of digital marketing. Think about these key digital media I define in my Digital Marketing: Strategy and Implementation book. If you operate in a market where your potential customers are continuously searching for new products and services that you offer then you can't be competitive unless you continuously…
An integrated marketing strategy means every element of your marketing plan must contribute towards your goals and objectives, or be cut out of the day-to-day workload
Lack of integration between strategic vision and the tactics needed to get there is a problem I often find when reviewing marketing strategies. That's why I created the RACE Framework as a simple structure to unify your marketing strategy through goals, objectives, and KPIs. You can see table with an example of integrated marketing goals and objectives planning below.
This is true whether I'm reviewing student assignments or mentoring marketers creating real-world marketing strategies. More often than not, I find myself reading about different aspects of marketing objectives and tactics that just don't line up with each other - and leave you questioning why.
These issues can be magnified by marketing strategy structure - the way the document is split up into separate sections. Without a unifying…
Using the RACE OSA process to structure a marketing plan
A marketing plan is an essential tool to compete and grow your business since it gives focus to your marketing activities by setting realistic, achievable priorities within your budget.
It simply defines what you want to gain from your investment in marketing and how you will achieve these goals through selecting the best marketing strategies and channels to acquire and retain customers.
A typical definition of a marketing plan used by traditional marketers is:
"A marketing plan is a strategic document that specifies your organization’s target markets, marketing objectives, programs, and activities to achieve them, expected timescales, resources to be utilized, according to defined budgets, and how success will be measured".
This is logical and simple and that's what we need to achieve through the structure of an effective marketing plan. However, for today's marketing where digital marketing channels are so important we need a…
