
Every January millions of people make New Year’s Resolutions such as ‘get a six-pack’, ‘start that business’ or ‘be healthier’. And every year, most of these resolutions fail. Why is this?
I hate to sound like your old school teacher but the old saying by Benjamin Franklin ‘if you fail to plan, you plan to fail’ holds true. Simply stating that you want to be healthier means nothing, but outlining a clear diet plan and gym regime with weight and fitness goals for each month, can make the dream a reality.
The same goes for your business’s marketing endeavours. The best way to ensure you reach the goal of ‘tripling your revenue’, ‘world domination’, or what have you, is to outline a clear strategy and plan. It needs to be precise with SMART goals.
This can all sound quite daunting but of course, we wouldn’t just propose a problem without offering a fabulous solution. Download a copy of our free Marketing Plan Template, Marketing Schedule and Buyer Persona, and follow these steps to get your company’s strategy ready for a prosperous 2022.
Step 1. Download Your Free Marketing Plan Guide
Make a copy of this version and edit to fit your needs or Go to “File” > “Download As” > “Microsoft Word” to Download. (Works best on PC and tablets)
Step 2. Reflect
Before one can begin on the strategy of the year ahead, it is important to reflect on the previous year to provide context to the new year. Identify if the objectives of the previous year’s plan were achieved and why/why not. Highlight any key lessons and learnings.
Step 3. Business Summary
In the Marketing Plan Template fill in the Business Summary section. By highlighting the Mission Statement early on in the plan it helps to give direction for the goals and objectives. Outlining the Marketing Leaders identifies what marketing skillsets your company has access to. Of course, Omni Online might be your digital marketing partner and therefore we’ve filled in one of the spaces which highlight some of the activities we may be helping your company with. If not, get in touch and see if we can help add to your company marketing skillset. Finally, the SWOT Analysis gives a quick top-level view of your companies current state.
Step 4. Target Market
In the Target Market section, you will analyse what industry / consumers you are targeting (or market segmentation), who are your ideal customers and which companies you are competing with.
By using the free Buyer Persona template you can create a detailed persona of your ideal customers. Buyer personas are essential as they ensure you know who you are marketing to and help keep messaging on track. It’s very easy to get sidetracked by what message you would like to see rather than what would appeal to your customers.
Create the persona from researching, surveying and interviewing your target customers. Try to avoid making any assumptions and only use real data where possible.
For the Competitive Analysis, interviewing your customers can give a better idea of who you are competing with. Ask them what their alternative to your product may be. It might surprise you who you are actually competing with, they might not even be in the same category.
Step 5. Business Initiative
Now it’s time to outline your Business Initiatives. These include top-level SMART goals in which the company hopes to achieve in the next 12 months. Be sure they align with your business’ mission statement.
Step 6. Market Strategy
Outlining the Market Strategy for the products/ services in your business will ensure that each element of the marketing mix has been considered.
Step 7. Budget
Given the marketing budget for the year, allocate the budget to the various marketing activities that will be necessary to achieve your marketing strategy objectives.
Step 8. Marketing Channels
Identify all the marketing channels that will be used, outline the purpose of the channel and what metrics will be used to measure its success.
Step 9. Marketing Technology
List any technologies or software that will be used to achieve the goals and objectives. If your company would like to start using software to help with an element of your marketing objectives, ask the Omni Online team as we work with various software solutions that may be useful to you.
Step 10. Marketing Plan Schedule
The final step is to put all the plans into the free Marketing Schedule template to ensure that no steps are missed throughout the year.