The marketing plan is the detailed roadmap that outlines all of your client’s marketing strategies, tactics, activities, costs and projected results over a period of time.
It organizes an entire company’s go-to-market strategy, outlines campaign media and execution, defines the required tools and processes, and projects return on investment if it tracks leads to sales and the bottom line.
Marketing Plan Value
Most businesspeople agree that good planning is essential for success. A plan is a compass; without one, you may be traveling in the right direction, but it's incredibly difficult to stay on course.
Since many B2B companies are sales-driven organizations, they don’t create a formal marketing plan. Most have a budget, but the marketing plan defines a detailed course for them to follow throughout the entire year.
It’s simply not enough to operate with a revenue target, sales quotas and a “budget” for marketing expenditures. While that’s commonplace at most small to medium-sized businesses, it robs the company of the ability to understand the true leverage gained by good marketing investments that flow to the bottom line and increase company value.
Companies with well defined marketing plans are able to:
Eliminate ad hoc marketing activities
Tie marketing investments to cash flow
Align the executive suite, marketing, sales and finance teams with their annual revenue goals
Clearly understand the activities required by all team members to execute the plan
Measure success and quickly diagnose problems
The Consulting M.O. enables you to define your client’s revenue goals and objectives, and create a simple or detailed annual marketing plan for their team to reference throughout the year.
With it, you can tie the CEO’s revenue number into the marketing and sales director’s activities for the company to execute, providing financial benchmarks along the way for all to measure.
Marketing Planning Services with the Consulting M.O.
Define the Planning Process and Set Plan Objectives. Define the planning process, the people involved, and the due dates. Establish high-level strategies and financial goals that will be the objectives of the plan.
Create a Simple Marketing Plan. For companies without a marketing plan or budget that desire some basic structure around their marketing activities, put together an overview plan and budget. Address the company’s competitive positioning, brand, pricing and distribution strategies, and outline a few campaigns with the corresponding sales execution. Deliver a 5-10 page plan and annual budget with projected ROI.
Create a Detailed Marketing Plan. For companies seeking a detailed annual plan, define in detail their competitive positioning, brand, pricing and distribution strategies. Then, outline the specific campaigns for the entire year, matched to the sales plan, and include projected impressions, responses, leads entering the sales process, customers acquired, gross profit and return on investment by campaign. Establish the measurement process for review and evaluate performance throughout the year.
Your client might need a marketing plan if:
They don’t have a formal campaign planning process in place
They’re not using campaigns to gain leverage and generate leads
They’re a sales-driven organization
Existing campaigns are ad hoc and not tied to revenue goals
They need more leads
They can’t measure ROI on their existing campaigns
