Five things to do when putting your marketing plan together

Marketing without a plan is like going into a restaurant that doesn’t have a menu; you can ask for your favourites or go for the chef’s recommendation, but you have no idea if you will like it nor will you know how much it will cost.

As a marketing agency we know too well that there have never been so many opportunities to communicate our messages. From digital marketing, social media and blogging to print and advertising, it’s easy to get bogged down with distractions and new trends that aren’t useful to our individual business. What is right for one isn’t necessarily right for another so investing the time to plan, listen to customers and react to the market is time well spent.

Invest the time to create a marketing plan that is tailored to your needs and ensure you keep a clear focus on the customer and your business plan objectives.

Here are our 5 top tips for putting together an effective marketing plan

1. Set a budget: Whether your marketing budget is £1,000 or £100,000 defining a budget will ensure it works hard for your business and is far more effective for measuring the success of any marketing campaign.

2. Create a timetable: Create a map of the year ahead and categorise each channel of marketing you will use such as online, print, events, PR etc. This is the basis of your plan which will allow you to clearly see opportunities and gaps in your marketing for the year ahead.

3. Spot the difference: Identify the different product and service developments you plan to make throughout the year ahead. Realise what makes you so different to your competitors?

4. Set goals: For each campaign set yourself some goals, for example, if you are exhibiting see if you can get the delegate list and if you are taking out a digital advert set a target for how many people click through to your website.

5. Measure: Always measure your marketing and create a mechanism for doing so, from looking at Google analytics to taking details from enquiries over the phone. This way you will easily be able to see what works well and what hasn’t given the results you expected.

Marketing planning is essential to controlling budgets and creating a pro-active marketing push. The most effective marketing strategies are simple and don’t have unrealistic goals, ensure your whole company is involved so they can help to implement changes and are aware of what you are planning to do.

Based in Derby we are a creative marketing agency and provide a wide range of services, we spend the time looking at what is right for our clients and their customers by embracing new digital marketing concepts to the good old fashioned letter writing.

If you need help or guidance on what would work for your business, then get in touch with us.