How to Create the Perfect Marketing Plan?
Every marketing individual whether they be part of a marketing team or a marketing agency needs to know how to create a marketing plan in order to market their product or service to the correct audience.
But knowing how to create a marketing plan isn’t as simple as one may think. There are multiple elements to consider when you think about how to create a marketing plan. One such element is the tools you use to help your team make an effective plan for your marketing campaign.
Here are some tools you can use when you consider how to make a marketing plan.
What is a Marketing Plan?
There is no question that you and your team should be taking the necessary time and effort to create a marketing plan what is a marketing plan anyway?
A marketing plan is an operational document that defines a company’s advertising tactic for both generating leads as well as reaching its required target audience.
A marketing plan outlines the outreach and public relations efforts that will be implemented over time, as well as how the organization will assess the impact of these initiatives.
Difference Between a Marketing Plan and a Marketing Strategy
While a marketing strategy and a marketing plan may encompass the same idea of needing to reach the end goal the two concepts can be seen to have slight differences.
Mainly, both the marketing strategy and the marketing plan play vastly different roles when you consider the entire marketing process of a company.
You can understand a marketing strategy as the general method you will employ to reach a certain marketing objective, whereas, in comparison, a marketing plan is a document that outlines the steps that you will need to take in order to attain that goal.
You can categorize strategies as being somewhat fluid in nature and often entail a long-term commitment. On the other hand, a plan is usually more focused on the near to medium future.
Basically, in other words, a strategy comes first and is followed by planning.
How to Create a Marketing Plan?
The way you create your marketing plan and what it entails exactly is dependent on what the goal for that marketing plan is as well as the type of company or organization you are working with.
You might, for example, need to construct a marketing plan that gives you a high-level overview of your company or organization’s overall marketing strategy or alternatively you may be looking to focus on a single channel for example content marketing, social media marketing , or search engine optimization.
Here are some basic steps you can follow when you are looking at how to create a marketing plan.
The first step to creating a marketing plan is knowing exactly who the marketing campaign is geared towards.
You can’t market a service or product without knowing who you are marketing it to.
If your company already has buyer personas created this step is going to be a breeze. If not, you may want to take the time to create buyer personas so that you can create a captivating marketing campaign that caters to your prospective buyers.
A buyer persona includes valuable demographic information such as the age of your buyers, their gender, income, etc. great buyer personas also include other valuable information such as what the problem of your buyers is that your product is aimed at fixing.
It is not just enough to know who you are selling to. You also want to know what the goal of your organization as a whole is as well as a more specific goal or the objective that this specific marketing campaign is looking to achieve.
A major element in improving your Return on Investment or ROI is knowing exactly what your goals or objectives are.
The best way to define goals is to use the S.M.A.R.T method . S.M.A.R.T stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely.
Creating goals that follow the SMART method ensures that you are reaching for something that is both realistic and attainable while also providing a time frame so that you and your team are not simply working without an end in sight.
Knowing who your target audience is and exactly what you are aiming to achieve helps you and your team decide on the best marketing tactic to use.
This includes deciding which channels are the best to advertise on based on your buyer personas as well as your objectives.
You need to know which distribution channels your campaign should be focusing on.
For example, the new generation does not read physical newspapers and therefore if they are your target audience running a newspaper advertisement would not only not appeal to your target audience but would also not meet your goals.
The marketing tactic is the main body of your plan . Therefore, ensure you take the time to brainstorm and discuss the best ways possible to reach your target audience and reach your goals.
But do not come up with ideas in isolation. You also need to keep your budget and schedule in mind.
Track budget using UDN Task Manager
Before your marketing campaign can go underway you need to discuss your budget with your client. Knowing what you have to work with will help you come up with the perfect marketing tactic to achieve your goals.
Apart from the budget you also have to come up with a schedule. This involves creating tasks and action items that need to be done in order for your campaign to progress.
A project management tool like UDN Task Manager can help you create these tasks, assign them to your resources, and track the progress through interactive Gantt charts and Kanban boards.
Here is why you should use a marketing project management tool when you consider how to create a marketing plan.
