The 30 Min Marketing Plan
An easy path to implementing a better marketing strategy
The Skinny
After going through all of the strategy and research, you will finally start looking at the specifics of your marketing plan of attack. Many business owners and managers try to skip the upfront work, but it will be quite difficult to nail down the plan of attack if you have not identified the why, how, and goals of your marketing plan. No matter if you are a mid-size corporation or struggling startup, you should go back to the drawing board and address these if you have not already. If you have done legwork upfront to get prepared, let’s rock and roll on our way to identifying the elements of a perfect marketing plan of attack.
The Fat
- A List of Priorities
You should have a clear list of places you will be building an audience and spreading your message. Now, you must prioritize them to fit your business goals. If you want to be the best barbershop in the community, you probably should put local radio advertisements near the top of your priorities list. In contrast, if you are an online retailer selling a niche product, it may be most important for you to start building your Youtube channel first and foremost. Now you have your priorities straight, and you can focus on what matters to you from a resources perspective. While this may sound like a clip from the time your mom wanted you to spend more time on school work, the idea is similar.
2. The Resources
Now you have identified your focus; now it’s time to show what labor, tools, and finances are needed to help build your brand. Take a moment and lay out how much time or money you have to be spending on a marketing initiative. If you are the only person working on it, map out how many hours per day you wish to spend on the initiative. Then, be sure to know what tools you are going to use. Are you still rocking the Microsoft Office Suite for blog writing? Do you use some scheduling software for social media? Once you have those nailed down, look at your budget to make sure you can cover the cost of labor, the tools to get the initiative off and running. Don’t forget to disperse your budget appropriately to account for higher startup costs, like a website.
3. Timeline of Implementation
Once you know what time and financial resources you can allocate to a marketing initiative, look at how long you have to build and implement it. For example, if your priority is to build an audience on Youtube and you have $5000 to do it, you should look at your resources and how long it would reasonably take to do so. For some initiatives, like a content marketing, should be considered a long-term process, but the timeline of implementation will help you identify significant milestones along the journey.
4. Key Performance Indicators
One of the most important of these elements is how you measure the success of an initiative. If you are running a promotional campaign, like a PPC campaign on Instagram, your KPI’s will start with how many people engage in your photo. These stats are ideal for identifying KPI’s for the campaign. The next step is to look at the number of subscribers, followers, or leads that come through that channel. Finally, and what the ultimate goal is, are statistics that indicate quality marketing that is creating better and more customers. These kinds of statistics take more digging to find out, but many modern marketing techniques have some methodology to understand this process, like Facebook’s conversion-focused advertisements.
The Takeaway
Once you have your plan of attack laid out, it is time to take the offensive and dive into your marketing initiatives. Always remember, not everything will go as planned every time. If something goes awry or isn’t working for you, don’t be afraid to pivot and try something new. When you do, just be sure to take the necessary steps to make sure you have some plan to get from point A to point B.
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” — Benjamin Franklin
