Your marketing plan is one of the most important documents you can have in your business. It’s the document that outlines what you’re going to do to get more sales.
How important is a marketing plan? Companies that put their marketing strategies down on paper have a much higher chance to be successful than ones that don’t.
It does take time and effort to create a strong strategic marketing plan. What are the most important things that you need to have in your document?
Keep reading to find out.
1. Goals and Objectives
A strategic marketing plan isn’t strategic unless is has goals and objectives to shoot for. That’s essentially the purpose of the marketing plan.
There’s a slight difference between goals and objectives. Your goals are general statements that describe the purpose of the marketing plan.
An example of a goal is, “To increase brand awareness of product XYZ.”
The objectives should be treated like SMART goals. They’re specific and measurable statements. A well-written objective would be, “To increase brand awareness of product XYZ from 10% to 15% in six months.”
You should have 1-2 objectives that are in support of your goal.
2. Audience Research
You have to really know your audience. Your strategic marketing plan should include a buyer persona and psychographic information.
That should reveal the deep emotional motivations as to why someone would buy your product or services.
3. The Tactics
Your tactics are the ways you’ll reach your goal. There are hundreds of possibilities, from billboard marketing to networking to social media.
Your marketing plan format should include information about each tactic and why you are choosing that over others.
For example, you may decide to use Instagram as a marketing tactic. Your reasoning is that in your audience research, you discovered that your audience loves that social media network.
Read More: What Is Usually the First Step in the Marketing Strategy?
4. Budget
How much will your tactics cost? There needs to be a detailed budget in your plan. Be sure to include a line item for each tactic, include the costs in labor and advertising.
5. Measurements
You wrote your objectives to be specific because you need to have a way to know if your tactics worked or not.
What you should do is to figure out how you’re going to track your success and how often you check your measurements.
One of your objectives may be to get more traffic to your website. You want to make sure that you have analytics installed on your site to track your measurements.
The next step is to take a baseline measurement to see where traffic is at before you implement tactics. Then, track traffic every week or two to see how your tactics are working.
Create a Strategic Marketing Plan
When you want to do everything you can to make your business a success, you need a strategic marketing plan.
It’s a lengthy document that requires a lot of research into your audience. The better you understand your audience, the more responsive they will be to your marketing messages. Do you want more great marketing insights? Be sure to check out this site often for more business and marketing tips.
