Steps To Create A Successful

Marketing Plan

All too often, business leaders with the best of

intentions to grow their business fall short when it

comes to understanding the function of a strategic

marketing plan. A well-crafted strategic marketing

plan provides an organization with the focus and

direction to pursue growth opportunities.

There are five essential steps you need to build an

effective strategic marketing plan:

Step 1: Determine your marketing philosophy

Companies that are successfully building brand

awareness, driving more leads and securing new

business as a result of their marketing efforts all

share a common philosophy — they view

marketing as an investment, not an expense. Once

you have determined that marketing is vital to

your company’s growth plan, your next step is to

define somemeasurable goals.

Step 2: Determine goals and objectives

To help you determine the right goals, spend

meaningful time with your team evaluating your

growth levels to date and your current position in

your market space. After making your list of

marketing goals, prioritize the list and then select

the top three to five, focusing on the ones that will

most meaningfully move your business forward.

Make sure the goals you set are measurable.

Setting measurable goals also brings with it

accountability, which is an essential part to

ensuring that your plan is actually executed.

Step 3: Set marketing strategies

Many companies skip strategy development in

favor of tactics, but tactics without strategy are

about as effective as a car without a steering

wheel. If your goals dictate where you want the

company to be, the strategy is the route you need

to take to get there. For example, sample strategies

could be:

* Increase brand awareness

* Increase overall sales volume

Step 4: Determining tactics

Strategies establish a broad outline of how you

want to achieve your goals/objectives, and tactics

are the specific actions or activities that need to be

properly executed in order to achieve them. If a

goal is to increase and enhance your company’s

brand awareness, a sound strategy would be to

increase the number of brand touches among

potential customers. Tactics for implementing that

strategy would be blogging about issues that are

relevant to your target audience, creating and

promoting an e-book with helpful tips or

sponsoring an event.

Step 5: Determine your marketing budget

Your marketing budget should be directed by your

company’s goals and objectives for the future, by

how fast you want to grow, and by how ready you

are to grow it. But your marketing budget can’t be

solely focused on just dollars. It also must consider

time and resources. Before you submit your budget,

you must also determine how many manpower

hours will be required to manage and execute the

plan.

While all five of these steps are critical to

marketing success, once the plan is completed, it

should not be put away on a shelf. Ideally, it

should be reviewed monthly with your team to

check progress and adjust as appropriate.

Marketing works best when the dedication is there,

so buy-in and accountability from your team will

ultimately determine success.