To begin with the Marketing Plan, it’s best to start with an executive summary. This is a brief overview of the document’s objectives and key information for preparing it. The goal is to give the reader a comprehensive view of what they’ll find in the Marketing Plan.
Analysis of the situation
Following the introduction outlined in the previous point, the first step is to understand the context before designing our objectives. The best way to do this is through a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats).
We will create a quadrant in which we will detail the internal factors (Strengths and Weaknesses) and external factors (Threats and Opportunities) that affect the company.
When analyzing the situation, we must conduct a study of our competitors to see what they’re doing, whether it’s working for them or not, whether they have more or fewer resources than us, and much more.
Definition of Objectives
It may seem simple, but it’s not about stating everything we’d like to achieve; it’s about being realistic. Digital transformation is increasingly embedded in marketing plans, which makes defining SMART goals easier.
#Strategies & action plan
Once we know what we want to achieve and have all the information from the executive summary and the situation analysis, we’re ready to define the strategies to follow. To do this, we’ll always work from the general to the specific. To work with the strategies, we’ll be guided by the “4 Ps of marketing.” These are :
Once the strategies have been defined, we will outline the actions to be carried out for each of them, specifying each action as much as possible and taking into account possible client reactions to be prepared and manage the actions flexibly, adapting as much as possible to the evolution of the plan.
Budget
The budget should be estimated by assigning a cost to each action, broken down into the different tasks required to carry it out. The more detailed the better. A reserve amount should also be included for any unforeseen events that may arise.
The overall marketing budget should take into account the company’s financial needs and current and future operating income statements.
Evolution & analysis of results
Once the entire Marketing Plan has been finalized and reviewed, we must define the KPIs (key performance indicators). These are the key indicators we must monitor and follow to ensure we are meeting our objectives or to identify any problems that are causing them to fall short, so they can be resolved later.
There are a number of tools available to analyze and measure our results , the most common example being Google Analytics for measuring web traffic. What type of audience comes to my website, do they perform the actions I’ve targeted, and where do they come from? Using the aforementioned tool, we can answer these types of questions.