Marketing Plans
Marketing Plans that set the foundations to accelerate growth.
Marketing Planning for SME's to set the roadmap to growth.
Marketing should be the engine room for growth in your business. But It’s a tricky balance to get right, especially in today’s highly pressured business environment where instant success is usually demanded.
Getting the balance between short-term success and building a valuable brand in the medium-long term is vital to satisfy the need of key stakeholders, whilst giving your sales team the right types of enquiry that will convert to won business.
But ‘why do I need a marketing plan?’ I hear you ask.
A marketing plan should go hand-in-hand with your overall business plan. It should be something that has enough flex in it to allow for ad hoc projects, and to allow the flex to realign efforts to do more of the things that are going well and consequently less of the things that perhaps aren’t performing.
A good marketing plan will bring all of the pieces of the puzzle together into a succinct plan that can be delivered to help drive your business forward.
How does the marketing planning process work?
As part of the marketing planning process, I will typically run through a four-stage process to ensure that any plans are aligned to your business goals.
I want to know as much about the business now and where you want to be in the future. I want to get to know about any marketing activity you’ve undertaken to-date – especially what’s gone well, and perhaps not so well and why.
With all of my marketing planning packages, we’ll cover the following:
* Competitor Analysis
* Goal and objective setting
* Your target customers
* Positioning and messaging
* Activity plan.
So whether you have a one-off project such as a new website or app, or are looking for ongoing third-party support, get in touch to see how I may be able to help.
STAKEHOLDER WORKSHOP
A 2 hour workshop with key stakeholders to get a feel for business priorities in the short, medium and long-term.
MARKET RESEARCH
I’ll then conduct market research to see what your competitors are doing and how we can beat them.
CREATE THE PLAN
I’ll then develop both a strategic marketing plan, as well as a breakdown of what needs to be done and when.
DEBRIEFING
A comprehensive debrief to chat through the plan and ensure it has met the brief and aligns to your goals.
Why use me to create your Marketing Plans?
A Clear Roadmap
One of the most important things from a marketing plan is that it can be understood by key stakeholders in the business.
I’ll deliver a clear and concise plan that you’ll be able to either deliver with your own resource, or I can support as an Outsourced Marketing Director if you don’t have the resource in-house.
Fast Turnaround
Using an external consultant means that there aren’t the everyday distractions that your team are likely to have to work through.
From the initial stakeholder workshop, I can usually deliver your bespoke marketing plans within a 2-week timeframe.
External Expertise
Bringing in someone external to help create your marketing plan is a great way to get a fresh and honest perspective on how your marketing efforts are currently performing, and how things can be improved in the future.
It is also a great way to ensure your team are able to continue with the day-to-day, whilst safe in the knowledge that I’m looking at the bigger picture for you.
What is included in a Marketing Plan?
Competitor Analysis
Understanding what your competition are doing, and how we can outperform them is a key part of the planning process.
It will also help with the positioning and messaging to ensure we can build you a unique position in the market.
Objective Setting
Having both short and long-term objectives that are being collectively worked towards are crucial to keep everyone on the straight and narrow.
As part of my marketing plans, I’ll develop a set of concise objectives and goals that we can then focus on achieving.
Target Market
Building a profile of your ideal customer is a great exercise to then focus efforts on reaching.
The key question we need to answer is ‘what is keeping them up at night’. We then need to find a way of developing our messaging to help get their attention.
Positioning & Messaging
Having a clearly defined position in the market, even if this is purely for internal purposes is really useful to ensure everyone is on the same wavelength and being consistent in how your team are communicating.
This may also include a roadmap of how we are going to evolve your position over a period of time to where you aspire to be in the market
Activity Plan
Whilst the strategic aspect of the marketing plan is important, I will also ensure that you have an actionable plan to be able to actually deliver the day-to-day elements.
This will involve all of the aspects required to help get your business to the next level.
Implementation
If you need support to implement the plans, I can work with you on a retained basis to ensure the plans become a reality.
This usually works on a number of days per week/month to support on executing the marketing plans that we’ve put in place.