How To Create An Effective Marketing Plan For Guaranteed Digital Marketing Success

An effective marketing plan is a secret to launching your businesses and unlocking new heights. Your marketing plan is the tool that turns your dreams and goals into reality. However, not all business owners create and implement an effective marketing plan. Don’t worry because we are here to help!

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is an exact roadmap that allows you to establish business goals, determine your target market, and understand where they stand. The goal of a marketing purpose is to optimize your marketing campaigns to gain the highest returns.

A marketing plan’s primary goal is to give you a clearer direction of your marketing activities and align them with your goals.

What are the things that should be included in my marketing plan?

• Long–term marketing goals
• Short-term marketing goals
• A detailed description of your ideal buyer persona
• High-level, tried and true marketing tactics
• Overhaul your current marketing status
• Key performance indicators or KPIs
• Any financial or budgetary considerations
• Timelines for the execution of each step

Why is a marketing plan necessary for a business?

There are numerous benefits to having an effective marketing plan, such as:

You gain a deeper understanding of your business.

A marketing plan forces you to conduct an in-depth analysis of your business. This reveals your strengths and weakness so you can act on them accordingly. This simple research can unlock opportunities for you to streamline your process.

You can align your marketing campaigns with your business goals.

Far too often, business owners follow a checklist of marketing strategies without analyzing if they even line up with what they want to achieve. For example, your goal might be to increase sales. LinkedIn marketing may not work well for you if most of your target audience is located on Facebook.

This simple alignment can help save you hundreds of thousands of dollars and give you your desired results.

You can keep every member of your team on the same page.

Your marketing plan serves as a working document and compass for all your team members. This way, the entire company can uniformly work towards the same goal instead of second-guessing their priorities.

You can emphasize what’s important.

Not all business goals are created equal. A marketing plan helps you focus on the most important goal you wish to achieve as soon as possible. Once you have identified the priority goal, you can now brief every member of your team and ensure that no one gets sidetracked.

You can make better decisions.

Your marketing plan allows you to plan ahead and form contingency plans so your progress won’t get derailed at every hiccup.

How to Create an Effective Marketing Plan

Create an executive summary

An executive summary is a brief overview of your company. It also includes the key takeaways of your marketing plan. This gives the reader a summary of the contents of the marketing plan.

Indicate your company mission, vision, and core values

Including the company mission, vision, and core values are essential, as these serve as the foundation for everything you do. This also contains the answers to the questions of what your company is doing and why you do the work.

Perform competitive analysis

Take a look at the market and your competitors. See what they are doing and create a SWOT analysis. This shows what you should emulate and avoid.

Identify your ideal client persona

Having a clear picture of your target market gives you a basis for all the marketing campaigns you will create. The basic rule is that you need to put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. What do they want to see from your campaigns? What are their pain points? How can your product or service improve their lives? Why should they choose you over their competitors?

List down your marketing goals

Create an outline of the specific milestones you wish to achieve. It is highly advisable to include numbers instead of vague metrics. Your goals may be to increase monthly traffic by X visitors, gain X amount of Instagram followers, or hit X dollars in sales by the end of the fiscal year.

Present your marketing plan

Indicate the specific strategies you wish to implement. You may seek inspiration from your competitors and pay extra attention to the techniques that made them successful. Create a clear roadmap that identifies what to do, how to do it, who will do it, and all the channels involved.

For example, a social media campaign roadmap may look like this:

• A graphic designer edits an image
• The copywriter creates the caption
• SEO specialist performs hashtag research
• The post gets published through a scheduling platform
• The team tracks its progress
• The team explores options for A/B testing
  

Identify your marketing budget

Your financial capacity is a huge consideration when it comes to marketing. Marketing is understandably costly, with tons of hidden expenses. A budget allows you to market your company without compromising the other aspects of your business.

To help you more about digital marketing, I need you to check this ebook I've created about the 10 things that I'VE WISHED I had known when I started marketing. If you are or are not in the same place, you must read this. Get the ebook here. 
If you want more up close and personal marketing strategies, advice, or an overhaul of your marketing structure, email us at zack@roimf.com or schedule a call with Zack now.