Goals & Objectives
To start with drafting a strategic marketing plan, brainstorm goals and objectives in tune with your overall business prerogative. Once you have the goal ready, cull out the objectives to measure the success of a goal. Notice that while a goal is a collective assessment of the objectives, objectives by themselves are to be individually assessed intermittently.
For example, you can have one annual goal and four supporting quarterly objectives. If your goal is to establish your social media eminence for 2024, figure out the four objectives slated for each quarter. To successfully realize a goal, you continue with an objective even after you have built its premises during the focus period.
Situation Analysis
If you are an MBA student or a professional with good work experience, you are aware of the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. A SWOT analysis gives you an overview of your marketing performance. For example, during analysis, you may find out that your business is not very unique (weakness), but your strength is the market with no previous exposure to your service (strength).
During the analysis, you can see that similar market players with customer service, attract better sales (opportunity) while a decrease in GDP, could be a warning (threat) to a decline in demand over some time.
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Messaging & Mission Statement
At any point in time, remember that a marketing strategy isn’t successful without consistent brand messaging and a mission statement. Start with the necessary information and represent the information artfully, so it effortlessly describes and enhances your product/service’s brand positioning. For example, “Amul The Taste of India.” “The Taste” is such a broad parameter that it encapsulates all the products and emphasizes the taste of “Amul.”
When your mission statement, PRs, and marketing materials resonate with the same message, you’ll know that your branding will take off right. Curious about the process? Here’s the MICA Digital Marketing Course for all the knowledge you’d need as a marketer.
Mark your Territory
This is something to be mindful of so that you know where to market your product/service. If your target audience is athletes or sportsmen, then offline branding would result in better ROI than online. How? Simply because sportsmen don’t languish on social media; they are mostly practising on the grounds.
It is important to have an agile strategy that can be molded for online communications. For example, Cricket fever in India is not only an offline epidemic but also online. Territory marking or broadly your area of promotion need due diligence before incorporating them into your marketing plan.
On your Timeline
Have you heard of a project management software o it already deployed at work? Great! With the help of project management software, you can manage a strict deadline. Whether it is your own company or you support some other company, having a schedule for the timely execution of projects is a leading trait among successful people.
It is a fact that our time estimation might not be perfect every time, and to accommodate that, factor in some extra hours. These extra hours are not a replacement for technical downtime unless you are likely to miss the deadline. Additional hours help review deliveries to have better control of anomalies.
Big Fat Budget?
It is a notion that until you have a big fat budget for your marketing, you are not able to do the best. The modern marketing plan is to reap the maximum from the minimum. Making a list of areas crucial for marketing activation will give you a clear runway for a takeoff.
To be able to choose the most cost-effective options ensures the overall success of a marketing plan. While paid advertising is undoubtedly an effective and easier way to earn visibility, but there is nothing like organic marketing which is always a cost-effective strategy.
Delegate & Measure
If you are very passionate about your work, it is undoubtedly a joyful thing. However, have to ensure is prevent a burn-out which is likely to happen when you are stretching too far. Whether you are a person company or a short-staffed agency, delegate work to skilled professionals so that you can focus on the execution part more than the nitty-gritty.
If you are a part of an established organization, you can delegate work according to your team member’s merit. If you are a team member, focus end-to-end on your work. Remember, no output is ultimate until you have measured it against your goals.
Be Agile, Not Fragile!
Remember, once you have set up your marketing plan, you are not done. Depending on the length and breadth of your project duration, you have to be sure to review the output. In most of the cases, marketing managers review if the strategy is fraught with mistakes detrimental to the success of your overall business.
Also, it is fair that your marketing goals absorb newer ideas and change in dimension than its original intent. Agility is an important aspect of growth; a fragile conceptualization of plan can mar the prospects. Agility can be inculcated in your marketing discipline when you are open to industry news and trends that can pollinate your strategy over some time.
Learn More: How to Build Successful Marketing Strategy
Wrapping Up
