introduction to the 7 sentence marketing plan

Introduction to the 7-Sentence Marketing Plan

by Monique Trottier

Monique Trottier@BoxcarMarketing

7-Sentence Marketing Plan

Sentence 1: What is the purpose of your marketing?

Sentence 2: How will you accomplish your purpose?

Sentence 3: Who is your target market?

Sentence 4: What is your niche in the marketplace?

Sentence 5: What tools and tactics will you use to carry out your marketing?

Sentence 6: What is your business identity?

Sentence 7: How will you measure success and allocate time and budget?


#1 What is the purpose of your marketing?

What are your goals? These need to be specific and measurable:

• Reach a new audience (#, %)• Promote an event (#, $)• Get sales (#, $)

Identify the top 3 goals and tailor them to be specific to your client/project. Be as specific as possible (i.e., drive # people to the FB page who will enter the contest (est. 10% conversion rate)


Sentence #1: Example

Let’s say you run a service that teaches people basic internet marketing practices. We’ll call it the “QuickLearn Training series.”

Here’s how a 7-Sentence Marketing Plan would work for you.

1. The purpose of the QuickLearn Training series is to educate business professionals on all aspects of internet marketing. Our secondary goal is to increase awareness and adoption of internet marketing best practices.

We will offer in-class training and educational sessions for individuals and business professionals looking for internet marketing education.

In the marketing of QuickLearn, our objective is to fully book 100% of the organization’s available time for internet marketing education:

- 2 hour sessions - 1 session per month- estimate 5-20 participants- estimate $100-150 per participant per session- estimate $10-50 per e-book, online training video


What are you going to do?

For example, you could:

• Set up a Facebook page to host the contest

• Execute an outreach campaign by contacting bloggers and influencers

What is it you will do to meet the business goal?

#2 How will you accomplish your goals?



2. QuickLearn will accomplish its purpose by:

• establishing the credentials of its educators,

• having sessions in a central location and/or made easily available online,

• positioning the learning series as a fast way to hone or improve one’s internet marketing skills.

Sessions will be hyper-focused, will fit into a regular weekday evening, and will be of high-quality.

Benefits (keyword phrases):- Hyper-focussed

- Fits into regular day- Fast way to hone or improve internet marketing skills

Competitive Advantages:

- People are too busy to take a full course- Full courses or training are often not specific enough or take a general overview approach instead of offering

how-to knowledge- We can accommodate small class sizes

- Reasonable cost - Difficult to find this type of training


3. Client’s Target Audience (or Audiences) is:

Who are the people you want to reach?

Create representative personas:

• what kind of people are they?

• what characteristics do they share?

• what social media channels do they use?

• how do they engage online?



3. Our target market is local small business and marketing staff in medium- to large-sized businesses who are currently managing some aspect of their company’s online marketing activities or who would like to learn more so they can take on those roles. They are beginners or intermediates in internet marketing. They value internet marketing and want to drive their businesses with the web or with an online strategy that is in-line with their overarching business strategy.

Our secondary audience is the same type of professionals in other markets who are willing to learn via distant education.


Sentence #3: Example Persona

Name: Steve

Title: Search Marketing Coordinator

Basics: (Includes demographics and psychographics – age, gender, location, family life, likes and dislikes, location in adoption curve [i.e. innovator, early adopter, early majority, late majority)

Professional and personal background: (includes job title, job history, role, leisure activities)

Quote: If I could learn this stuff through osmosis, I would. There’s never enough time in the day to stay up to date. I need something that can fit in between my job duties and dad role.

Favourite Sites: (with context to this project)

Goals: (i.e. what is this person’s goals when looking for the services/product you’re offering?)

I need / I want: (i.e. what does this person need and or want in order to reach the above goals. Remember to keep in mind the characteristics you described above)


How will you position yourself? Use the S.P.H.E.R.E. acronym:

• So What: Why does your client’s product/service matter? What makes your client different from its competitors? (list competitors – name, URL) Why do consumers choose your client over someone else?

• Personality: What are the adjectives that describe your client’s brand?

• Hook: What’s your client’s story angle? Use phrases that are easy to remember to helps to spread your client’s story via word of mouth.

• Ego: Who does your client need to engage with? Who can benefit from promoting the brand amongst their friends? Why do people want to engage with the brand?

• Relevancy: What is the relevancy between the audiences’ motivations and what your client is trying to do?

• Effort: What does your client need to do in order to keep the audience engaged throughout the campaign as well as after the campaign is finished.

Sentence #4: Client’s niche in the marketplace



4. We will position ourselves as the prime source of one-on-one and small-group training, guaranteed instruction on the management of internet marketing campaigns.

We are good and fast.

Benefits:-hyper-focussed -fits into regular day- fast way to hone or improve internet marketing skills

Competitive Advantage:-People are too busy to take a full course-Full courses or training are often not specific enough or take a

general overview approach instead of offering how-to knowledge

-We can accommodate small class sizes -Reasonable cost -Difficult to find this type of training


• List all the possible marketing tools or tactics that could be used to meet your desired goals. Review the Social Media Starfish or http://TheConversationPrism.com

• Pick the ones that align with #1 - your business goals, marketing purpose

Sentence #5: Marketing tools we plan to employ

http://TheConversationPrism.com




Sentence #5: Marketing tools we plan to employ





5. Marketing tools to be used will be a combination of

• personal emails• client testimonials• blog posts• printable brochures• search engine marketing• advertising specialties (perhaps in Business in Vancouver or other

business trade magazines)• free seminars• conferences and presentations for industry groups, trade/commerce

boards and organizations• online sampling (videos, ebooks, etc.)• professional location for sessions and business-casual instructor

attire• a website offering a free newsletter (session alerts), case studies,

marketing articles, session information, sample videos and ebooks• publicity in the local newspapers, on radio talk shows, and on

television.• On-going activities in communities of our peers and friends


Sentence #5: Tool-use visual graph


Sentence #6: The client’s business identity

Describe in as few sentences or words as possible the feelings, voice and tone the company/brand evokes, and the brand attributes you want it to convey.

For example:

➡ Warmth, friendliness, reassurance, comfort, excitement, caring, honesty, humour, professionalism, intelligence, sophistication, reliability, and trustworthiness



6. Our identity for QuickLearn will be a blend of professionalism, personal attention, and respect for our students and the role of the web in their lives and their businesses.

Work for us is about fun, innovation and creativity.


• Align this sentence with #1, 2 and #5 – looking at your goals how will you measure the effectiveness of your tactics? List the key performance indicators (KPIs)

• How much time and money will your client devote specifically to social media?

• Estimate 2 hours per channel per week. (Number of hours a week you can commit to social media / 2 = Max. number of social media channels you can take on)

Sentence #7: Plan to measure success and allocate time and budget


Sentence #7: Example Grid

GoalActions that will

achieve goal WhyDesired Audience

Response KPIs

Book 100% of time for internet marketing education (max. 20 participants, 1 session per month)

•Outreach to minimum 1,000 qualified leads per event announcement;

•Build newsletter audience for course alerts/registration, special offers for email members

Online buzz means more people know about the event; aim to reach 1,000 qualified leads (assuming 2% response rate)

•Register for the course

•Sign up for the newsletter

•Share email/forward to a friend

•Open the email

•Registrants•Timeline for Registrations (Days of the Week, Time from 1st Announcement),

•Time of day registering

•Newsletter subscribers

Goals > Actions > Response > KPIGoals (#1) > Actions (#2, 5, 6) > Response (#3, 4) > KPI (#7)


Action Steps

The process of creating a 7-sentence marketing plan is not so that it can languish in a filing cabinet.

After creating a 7-sentence marketing plan, you should:

• Show the plan to everyone in your organization who is involved with marketing and ask for feedback and input.

• Show the plan to each employee, even if they are not involved with marketing. They often have insights into sales or customer service that make not be apparent to you.

• Breath life into the plan by doing what you say you’ll do in the plan and measuring all your marketing activities against the strategy.

• If a proposed activity does not follow the strategy, change the activity or discard it.


Summary

A good 7-Sentence Marketing Plan is a strategy that can guide your efforts for the lifetime of the organization (or at least the lifetime of your marketing campaign).

The Plan has to be reviewed regularly and adapted as your audience’s needs change and as your business evolves.

If you understand:• the overall business goals (#1)• how you will accomplish those goals (#2), and • who your audience is (#3)

then you are able to use that knowledge to refine: • how you will present yourself to the market (#4--the So What), • what tools are best to use (#5), and • how to leverage your corporate culture (#6).

Measure ALL marketing materials you plan to use.

No matter how much you may love a marketing idea, if it does not fulfill your strategy, toss it out.


Next StepsASSIGNMENT:

Use the worksheet provided to write a 7 Sentence Marketing Plan. Follow the format described in this presentation and the worksheet.http://bit.ly/7-sentence-exercise

READINGS FOR NEXT WEEK:

Chapter 2 and 3 of Friends with Benefits

Boxcar Marketing, "Defining Your Target Audience with Personas," http://www.boxcarmarketing.com/blog/defining-your-target-audience-with-personas/

Forrester, “Social Technographics Defined 2010,” http://www.forrester.com/empowered/ladder2010

http://bit.ly/7-sentence-exercise

http://bit.ly/7-sentence-exercise

http://www.boxcarmarketing.com/blog/defining-your-target-audience-with-personas/




http://www.forrester.com/empowered/ladder2010

http://www.forrester.com/empowered/ladder2010

introduction to the 7 sentence marketing plan

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