By
·
4 minute read
There are a lot of marketing templates out there.
But to ensure your plan impresses business leaders and makes it easy for them to see the connection back to business objectives and results, there are some key components you should consider including.
- Key Results
Organise your plan by key results to make it super clear which initiatives or tactics align with which key results.
This helps your peers, team and leaders understand what the plan is against the business metrics, not only helping OKRs stay front of mind in the ongoing management of a marketing plan but also helping business leaders see how the budget and tactics are tied into business performance, which can be a challenge in any business.
If changes are required or budgets need to shift, this can also make it easier to decide where to make reductions i.e. prioritise which key results can marketing get away with contributing less to in order to save on budget. There may be other areas of the business that are working on initiatives that will deliver more towards certain key results for instance.
It can also help you focus attention on relevant marketing tactics if a key result is under-performing.
- Gaps & opportunities in your brand funnel
If you’re investing in regular brand tracking and have a view on where your strengths and weaknesses in the funnel are, you can ensure your plan’s budget, effort and tactics are leaning into where the growth opportunities are.
This ensures that the ongoing marketing efforts are pointing proportionate energy into growth opportunities for the business, while solving genuine customer needs or objections.
Where the brand funnel and OKRs align, you can clearly articulate how growth opportunities in your brand funnel would support key results as well, a win-win.
- Historical performance insights
Examining previous campaigns and activities for seasonal trends, winning channel combinations and for insights on last click vs supporting channels is an essential element to any good marketing plan.
Embedding these insights alongside key results and brand funnel opportunities at the most opportune times throughout the year and in combination with supporting channels will provide a data-led, low risk approach to implementing marketing tactics.
If you know that a particular creative style or message works harder for you, or certain social channels are important to help last-click conversion channels to perform more cost efficiently, then weave these into your plan, with the evidence tucked up your sleeve ready to impress.
Consider competitive insights, market conditions and consumer behaviour to give your marketing tactics relevance and cut through.
- Paid, owned, earned
Gain exceptional efficiency by ensuring you focus on the key marketing tactics that are likely to deliver success and build frequency and multiple touchpoints by leveraging them as fully as possible via as many of your paid, owned and earned channels as are relevant.
This builds consistency in message to help achieve cut through and frequency while allowing you to do a few things thoroughly and well, rather than taking too many things without enough touchpoints for each to do well.
A helpful exercise is to plot out all your paid, owned and earned channels, platforms and assets and review each tactic. I.e. if there’s a winning message you want to get back into market, implement it on your website, socials, emails, store branding, spin up a customer promo around it, leverage it at the next event as well. Leverage it far and wide to increase your chances to intercept your customers or potential customers, along with the likelihood of each tactic being effective.
- Estimates of reach
Including an estimate of reach, number of followers, customers or other relevant metrics for each channel or tactic will help create clarity on relative scale of each tactic, and cumulative reach across the plan overall. This is helpful to show the plan’s budget versus potential opportunity to reach your target segment versus other budget weights.
It also serves as another point to keep marketing accountable and data-led, as each tactic gets implemented and real data starts flowing in, you can readjust assumptions or energy towards tactics based on actual performance. If you need 100 people at the top of the funnel for a particular tactic to achieve the outcome you’ve estimated, and in reality you’re only seeing a small percentage of that come through, then you can pivot or optimise quickly to get on top of it before it has a negative impact on your plan’s performance.
- ROAS & ROI
Tie the plan together with its estimated return on ad spend and return on investment, or even better, plan a few scenarios at different budget weights or focus areas to give your leader carefully designed options to choose from. This is a sure-fire way to impress, but also gain more control over the outcome and budget. It will also pave the way to alignment on results versus budget so stakeholders have realistic expectations to minimise those conversations around hitting the same outcome with lower budgets.
- Resource & capacity
Avoid setting yourself and your marketing plan up for failure by ensuring you have the necessary capacity and resources to execute, maintain and continually optimise your plan. Don’t plan to sit and twiddle your thumbs of course, however by working smarter instead of harder by considering all the steps above, you should be well-placed to avoid unnecessary stress and busy-work. But also do due diligence on the amount of work required to implement your marketing plan and be realistic about your (or your teams’) ability to complete it. Taking on too much either by being too ambitious or failing to plan properly will only invite messiness and angst… and effective marketing is all about being focussed and clear on how to drive business results and delighting customers.
Factoring in the above seven considerations will help take your marketing plan from run of the mill to exceptional, putting you in a better position to deliver results, on budget, while remaining calm and organised.
Enjoy not only the mental health benefits, but also the valuable reputation you’ll be building with your peers, stakeholders and leaders.
