Your marketing plan translates strategy into execution and always begins with a strategic vision of your customer experience and their needs. It should articulate a clear understanding of your brand positioning and then define offers relevant for your audience. Only then can you gain a realistic understanding of the nitty-gritty tactics and metrics, along with the requisite budget, resources and timeline to successfully achieve your organization’s objectives.
Below is our preferred framework for starting a go-to-market plan, but the final plan will significantly evolve from this depending on your audience, your offering and your business objectives. Our integrated 360 degree customer-centric approach is designed to reach your audience wherever they are and inform strategic decision-making through continuous feedback and measurement.
Audience:
- Personify the decision makers of your primary audience as well as their key influencers
- Identify customer needs
- Outline stages of the buying process from your customer’s perspective
- Characterize your ideal high-value customer
Positioning:
- Identify key benefits and value of your offering from the perspective of your customers
- Differentiate your offering from competitive alternatives in the minds of prospects
- Develop clear and concise positioning statement to introduce yourself & echo your message
Brand Story:
- Outline a narrative theme & key messaging to guide engagement with your audience
- Identify venues and scenarios for telling the story
- Consider visual media, including video
Offering:
- Evaluate possible revenue models
- Define packaging — what’s in the box, or included against price tiers
- Merchandising — align products to audience tastes to increase category sales
- Price offerings and promotions, justified with financial analysis
- Develop promotions calendar aligned with seasonality
Tactics:
The recommended tactical actions vary greatly by your audience and your offering. This is just a representative list of considerations. One size does not fit all.
- Word-of-Mouth — drive referrals & influence prospects in physical settings & across social media, viral, guerrilla, grassroots and experiental marketing
- Content strategy — create editorial calendar to stay top-of-mind via newsletters, blogs & visual storytelling
- Public relations — reach audience via media, events, seminars, speaking engagements, etc.
- Website — optimize online engagement, expand reach via SEO & SEM, drive traffic and conversions
- Social — boost reach & engagement, as appropriate for your audience, across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Yelp, Tumblr & Instagram
- Mobile — extend customer experience on-the-go via mobile web, apps, SMS and Location Based Services (LBS)
- Direct marketing — reach & influence prospects via physical mailings or email
- Advertising — gain visibility & reinforce image in the appropriate media venues
- Professional associations — enhance reputation via trade events, partnerships, award nominations & industry rankings
Sales:
- Define stages of sales funnel & demand generation / lead management
- Identify channel partner / referral affiliate opportunities
- Align marketing automation for nurturing customer lifecycle
- Define conversion goals to optimize website and ecommerce transactions
- Collateral and sales support tools
- Outbound marketing
Measurement:
- Define performance objectives
- Identify key metrics to monitor & manage marketing performance
- Website analytics
- Create selling opportunities via customer feedback exercises
- Institute metrics across customer relationship management (CRM)
Execution:
- Budget
- Resources
- Timeframe
- Contingency actions
One size does not fit all. Every marketing plan should be unique to the business, its objectives and its audience. But hopefully this outline helps you identify most of the elements you should think about to achieve success in your marketing efforts.