Planning for a successful 2018A review of marketing plan fundamentals

What can I do to get organized?Businesses that are constantly successful in marketing have a common factor: A plan.

Regardless of the size of your company, an organized and well thought-out marketing plan is imperative to keeping goals and strategies consistent and focused. This plan should include your who you are marketing to (target audience/ideal customer), how you’re going to reach them (channels and tactics), what you’re going to say to motivate and persuade them (key messages) and effective ways to measure the return on your efforts.

Whether you are working with a marketing firm or designing the plan yourself, this eBook will touch on the different ways to help your business or organization create a solid marketing plan for 2018.

Table of Contents

Quarterly and Annual Planning 4How Do I Plan? 7Laying Out Your Plan 12Measuring Your Success 15Thank You! 22

Quarterly and Annual PlanningWhile it might seem like a lot of work, we recommend starting with an annual plan followed by quarterly ”mini” plans (that are aligned with and supporting the annual plan).

Of course, situations may shift from January to December so these plans should be flexible. However, having your strategies and campaigns in place in advance will allow you to keep the overall vision in mind while tackling the details on a quarterly basis and adjusting if necessary.

To Start:• Annual Plans• Quarterly Plans

Annual Plan

Your annual plan should include the broad goals set forth for your company during the year. Look back at the previous year as a whole; ask yourself these questions: u What was effective? u What was not effective? u Has your audience changed? u Do you have the same budget?u Are there new resources to better allocate your money? u Where is the future of the company heading?u Have our goals changed from last year?u Are these goals reasonable and things we can actually achieve within one year?These questions should all be kept in mind while putting together your annual plan. We recommend no more than 3 to 5 goals total.

Quarterly Plans

Quarterly plans are address strategies and/or campaigns to be used during specific times of the year. These should be designed to support your primary goals and take the time of year, business seasonality, etc. into consideration. Why do we recommend quarterly plans? u Breaking the plan down quarterly helps make implementation more realistic – you can

tackle a little bit at a time.u Quarterly plans help you employ short-term strategies that can address special events,

seasonality, holidays, etc.u These plans can be more specific. While the annual plan addresses your overarching

approach, key messages, and goals, quarterly plans breakdown timely strategies that aren’t always detailed in an annual plan.

u Quarterly plans are less likely to get “lost”. If you’re holding yourself accountable every three months, goals and plans will continue to stay fresh and top-of-mind. Annual plans may be forgotten or overlooked if not continually accessed and addressed.

Start with the BasicsBefore you jump into the nitty-gritty of how you’re going to

market your company or product, start with the basics. Review

your goals, your company, and your target audience. This will help

remind you (and anyone else helping execute the plan) where you

started, where you’re trying to go, and who you’re trying to reach.

Up Next: • Goals• Overview• Situational Analysis• Target Audience

Goals

Goal setting is a broad overview of the milestones a company or organization hopes to reach. Setting your goals is the catalyst for setting up the rest for your marketing plan, as all efforts should be focused to achieve these goals in the marketing plan. Get them in writing to increase you chance of reaching them. These can be both internal and external company goals.

Example: XYZ Company would like to:

u Expand their audience to include younger demographics.

u Increase awareness and sales of new product.

u Foster relationships with local key business makers to aid in growth and outreach.

u Increase product knowledge of employees with educational efforts.

Overview of the Company

Why is an Overview needed? An Overview is a glance at your company to clearly state what the company does, issues that want to be solved, any factors that affect the company, and your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). This way, everyone involved in marketing (in-house or agency) has a clear understanding of who your company is and what you hope to achieve.

This should include:u Your purpose, why are you in business

u What you hope to accomplish (aside from being profitable if you’re a for-profit organization)

u What you offer – services or products

Situational Analysis (SWOT)

What is a situational analysis? A situational analysis is a formal PR term used to define an overview a business’ current issue or environment. It addresses internal and external factors that could or do impact the business/organization.

Often, these are developed by first doing a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

Strengths and Weaknesses are internal factors: company limitations, things the company does well, unique qualities of the company, issues within the company, lack of resources, etc. This should be a hard, honest look at the company itself, both positive and negative.

Opportunities and Threats are external factors: efforts to educate external audiences, ideas that could enhance the business or organization, perceptions that may be had by target audience members, and a listing of competition. This is a look at what external factors can or do affect your company, again, both positive and negative.

Target Audience

Defining your target audience is imperative as you’re setting up your marketing plan. Be as specific as possible. You could even consider creating a persona or character for your audience(s). What would one person in that audience look like, where would they live, what are their hobbies, where do they get their information, how do they make their buying decisions, etc.?

When your target audience is set, all marketing efforts should be scrutinized and asked: Will this help me reach my target audience to achieve my goals?

Example: u Women, 50-65, style-driven, household income of $150,000+

u Adults, 40-60, small to medium business owners looking to grow their company

Laying out the rest of your plan…There are many types of marketing plans that you can use to promote your business. We recommend the GOST model, which breaks down your efforts and the means to achieve them.

Using GOST, we address Goals, Objectives, Strategies and Tactics –everything you’ll need to create a successful marketing plan and ensure you don’t leave anything out.

Up Next:• Goals• Objectives• Strategies• Tactics

GoalsFor both the annual plan and the quarterly plan, goals should be established for the overarching wants and needs of the business outcome. This can be utilized for all marketing efforts.

ObjectivesObjectives are the measurable milestones you plan to reach in order to meet your goals. When you are thinking about objectives, they should be easily quantifiable with a number. Start with words like “increase”, “grow”, or “improve”.

All objectives should also be SMART – strategic, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound.

Example:

Annual Plan Objective: Increase positive stories in XYZ Community by five over last year, for a total of 10 annually.

Quarterly Plan Objective: Increase Facebook audience by 20% (or 400 followers) within 3 months as measured by audience growth.

StrategiesStrategies are the “how” to achieve your objectives by outlining a path. Omit your tendencies to use “to” or “by.” Words like “promote” and ”create” are a good place to start. These could include campaigns, outreach programs, new connections to be made, etc.

Sample:

Annual Plan Strategy: Promote our new services within the XYZ Community.

Quarterly Plan Strategy: Create a relationship with the business reporters at the XYZ Gazette.

TacticsTactics are the nitty gritty of getting your objectives and strategies done. Consider them your “to do list”. They are the actions that must take place to complete them. Use words like “contact,” “utilize,” “develop” and “join.”

Sample:

Annual Plan Tactic: Continually review and update the XYZ Community promotion list.

Quarterly Plan Objective: Attend the XYZ Gazette roundtable discussions to get face-time with the reporters.

Measuring Your SuccessHow do we know if we’ve succeeded in meting our goals?

WE MEASURE!

By using measurable Objectives and KPIs, we will have a clear definition of success and be able to identify what is and isn’t working (along the way and in the end).

Up Next:• Ways to Measure• Reviewing Objectives

KPIs• Putting your Data into

Action

Ways to Measure – YOUR WEBSITEGoogle Analytics is WORTH taking the time to learn. With it, you can acquire so much information about the audience on your website: Where they are from, how they got to your website, how long they were there, what their interests are, if they were on mobile, tablet or desktop, and so much more!

Pro-tip 1: Set up Conversion Goals. While a little tricky at first, setting up conversion goals is imperative to measuring success. They enable you to track ROI by tracking how many users take the desired action you set before them (i.e. request a quote, clink on a “Learn More” link, fill out a form, etc.). With conversion goals you can determine if the horse you brought to the water (your website), drank (signed up, inquired, etc.). Goals can be applied to almost any action on the webpage and can even be assigned a dollar value. How’s that for ROI tracking?!

Pro-tip 2: Under reports, click Acquisition, then Overview. This is where your traffic is originating. u Organic Search uses search engines like Google or Bing. u Direct is typing the website in directly to the URL form of their internet browseru Referral comes from another website that has your link on it. u Social comes from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. u Email comes directly from a link in an email marketing tool (newsletter, special, etc.).

Ways to Measure – YOUR WEBSITEGoogle Analytics continued….

Pro-tip 3: To truly track exactly where traffic is coming from, start implementing UTM codes into any link that directs back to your website. UTM codes (ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder) allow you to put specific tracking terms into your website link without it compromising your web page. It’s nice to know you sent people from your social media channels to your website, for example, but don’t you want to know WHY they visited, what motivated them?

You can be as vague (channel only) or as specific as you want (campaigns, topics) with your tracking, depending on your goals. By utilizing Source and Medium in the campaign builder link above, then going to Google Analytics, then Acquisition, then All Traffic, and Source/Medium, you can see how the link correlates to the traffic on your site.

For example: If we were tracking clicks from different sources to our website, GetPushing.com, on our Source/Medium page we might see:

From this example, 634 visitors came from Google Search and 4 completed our Goal of filling out the Contact Us form. 5 came from a Social Media post about our eBook, and 1 each came from our Social Media Blog post, Power Hour post and social post.

Ways to Measure – FACEBOOKFacebook Insights are a great way to track what’s happening on your Facebook page. In Facebook Business Manager, click on your page, then navigate to Insights along the top.

From here, you can get a snapshot of what’s happening on your page during a specific timeframe. You can review Likes, Actions on Page, the Posts, Video Views and much more!

For example, if you wanted to see how many Page Views you had last month on a mobile device, click on Page Views, change the dates, then By Device.

This information is important because it indicates what your audience wants and what they are interested in. It also tells you when they are most engaged. You can use that information to refine future content and publishing times to improve performance.

In this example, 412 people viewed the Facebook page on a mobile device and approximately 40 viewed it on a computer.

Ways to Measure – EMAIL MARKETINGEmail analytics are an underutilized, valuable resource. You should be reviewing the open rates 2-4 days after each send, but also reviewing the click-through rate (CTR), if it applies. CTR is the percentage of people who click anywhere on the email after they have opened it. So your email could have a 40% open rate, which is GREAT, but how many people are actually clicking through to your website (if that is your desired action)? If only 2% are clicking, then it’s time to look at why they’re not clicking. Is the Call-To-Action clear? Is the link too far down in the email? Is the email too busy or distracting?

If your open rate is low, then look at your subject lines. Are they clear and enticing? Are they free of too many (!!!!!) exclamation points and CAPITAL LETTERS? Also, look at your sender name. Does it accurately represent the company?

Also, look at your list performance. Your list should be segmented so you can send specific messaging/calls to action, but also so you can see what your long term customer vs. new buyer vs. board member vs. prospects are interested in.

Most major email providers will provide statistics on best practices. Use them, but don’t base your entire business on them. Test within your company for best send times and best subject lines.

Reviewing your Objectives/KPIsSo often we hear of people who spent all this time putting a plan together with objectives, etc. but then never check back to see if they met their goals. Why bother putting the plan together then?

Schedule time quarterly and annually to assess if you achieved your objectives or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). A simple YES, NO or IN PROGRESS will suffice. This will give you (and your boss, board, etc.) a quick overview. You can then take that information and utilize it for the next plan. Was the goal too high? Which channels performed best?

Measuring individual channels is important for a micro view, but you need to check the overall health of your marketing plan. You can do that by checking the actual performance against your objectives and KPIs.

Putting Your Data into ActionWow. With all that measuring you have a lot of data now! Unfortunately, it means nothing if you’re not utilizing the insights to take action to better your company’s marketing plan.

After you review your quarterly and annual plans, ask yourself:u Does this data change my plans? u How can I implement it to best benefit our company/organization? u Were we able to achieve our goals? Why or why not?u If last quarter was significantly above or below expectations, do I need to change

next quarter’s plans?

Without analyzing the performance information there’s no accountability. Without using that information to make change, there’s no traction gained. If something isn’t performing, why continue to use it or do it?

Make your plan, work it, measure it, and grow!

THANK YOUThank you for reading our marketing organization eBook. We hope

it will assist you with your marketing plans and making your

processes successful.

If you ever feel over your head or start to think you could use a

little help, please feel free contact us. We’d love to help.

GetPushing.com239.221.2858