Just as you don’t get a rocket to its destination without a solid blueprint, detailed trajectories, and the right fuel, you don’t get great marketing without a plan, the best tactics, and a way to measure results. In business, starting with a plan creates a clear path forward and propels progress.
Why is a Marketing Plan so important? It’s not really rocket science – it’s more like following a recipe. It provides the ingredients, budget amounts, and timing required to achieve the results you’re targeting.
At risk of giving away the recipe to our “secret sauce,” I’m going to share with you exactly what goes into developing a strategic and tactical marketing plan. I understand that following a recipe does not make you Gordon Ramsay, but, with the finesse of a 5-star chef, we come alongside companies to share our decades of experience leading marketing initiatives that accelerate your results!
Let’s walk through the key elements of the plan:
Define your product or service. Whether your company is 1 or 25 years old, having a clear, succinct understanding of why you are in business and what makes you different is important. As simple as it sounds, this is an area that requires a great deal of consideration; finding alignment is not always as easy as one might think! Engaging an outside facilitator skilled at clarifying the essence of the business is beneficial. As one client put it, “Working with 5280 Accelerator is absolutely phenomenal!! It’s as if you read my mind, or actually improved every thought I had!”
Understand your SWOT. Regularly reassessing your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats provides you a current view of your company’s situation before spending any marketing dollars. Because we have worked with so many industries, we can add perspectives and uncover trends that you may not be aware of while you’ve been focused in your own space. As an example, we noted a potential risk for a client’s main customer to be acquired and how that would impact their business. It seemed unlikely when we brought it up. Strangely enough, a week after we completed the SWOT, that very customer was acquired, and our client was prepared with a response to this shift because we had already considered the possibility.
Define your target audience. While there may be multiple buyers of your product or service, being crystal clear about who the best prospects are helps you personalize your message to them. At a very minimum, understand your target audience’s job titles or responsibilities, reasons they might need your product or service, their pain points, and where they source information.
Another client said, “5280 Accelerator has worked with us for several years and have become an essential part of our team. I’ve never been a good marketer and tended to downplay our services. However, 5280 Accelerator has taken us way past that and is instrumental in approaching our services strategically so that I’m much more comfortable reaching out to existing and potential clients. I highly recommend them.”
Craft your value proposition and differentiation statements. We spend a lot of time on this part of the strategic marketing plan with our clients because it establishes the foundation for all outbound messaging moving forward. This provides clarity in all outreach campaigns because when you’re clear about your messaging, your prospects are also clear.
Define key strategic marketing objectives. The high-level goals you want to attain are what connects the strategy to the tactics. Some objectives could include aligning your messaging across all marketing channels, increasing your social media followers on a specific platform, or creating compelling campaigns to drive prospects to your website to learn more about your products/services. A common mistake we see is that companies put too much on the list. A straighter path gets you to your destination faster, so stick to three marketing objectives to avoid becoming overwhelmed.
Build out tactics. Within the framework of your three strategic marketing objectives, individual marketing tactics are built. Keep your tactics focused and measurable so you are not diluting your own efforts. Determining which tactics could reap the best results is often a function of what has worked for you in the past. We provide the additional insight of knowing what is currently working for numerous other B2B businesses. There may be better, cheaper, faster tools than those you are aware of.
Said one client, “We brought 5280 Accelerator in to help us refine our non-profit agency’s brand, message, and outreach. Since working with them, our communications and brand identity have been elevated significantly, enabling us to better reach the community we serve. They balance a strategic and tactical approach, keeping an eye on the bigger picture while also being attentive to the details. 5280 Accelerator has helped us make substantial strides in how we communicate and execute our vision.”
Create KPIs. Knowing how to interpret the success or failure rate of your tactics is key to a great marketing approach. Bear in mind that marketing needs to be given adequate time to reveal results, but not so much time that you’re wasting money on a path that’s not working. We run all of our tactics in 90-day sprints. This provides enough time to collect meaningful data, determine how each tactic is performing, and pivot as needed.
This client stated it well, “I’ve worked with 5280 Accelerator since 2015 and to say they are awesome is an understatement. From the beginning, they have focused on clearly identifying and implementing marketing strategies specific for me and my business. They are always professional, curious, timely and a delight to work with. In the past year, 5280 Accelerator has helped me double my business! Even if I wasn’t a financial guy, I wouldn’t need a calculator to compute the ROI.”
Holy Cow…This Seems Like a Lot of Work!
Planning does take a lot of effort. But a clear plan leads to clear expectations that tie to measurable results. Our marketing expertise allows us to work faster and more efficiently than what clients can accomplish alone. We lead the charge, follow a proven process, ask the right questions, and add critical insight. It takes just one month to create a strategic marketing plan that gives our clients the map, the messages, the timeline, and the budget to get started on the best path for accelerated growth.
Instead of wasting time and money throwing this or that up against the wall, we can help you take the guess work out of marketing. We’d welcome the opportunity to accompany you and hit the accelerator on your growth journey!