A good marketing plan sets clear, realistic and measurable targets. It includes deadlines, budgets and specific responsibilities assigned to each team member. Obviously, no matter how good it is, a plan cannot implement itself. Therefore, you need a “plan steward” who will be responsible for not only ensuring that it gets implemented, but also that progress towards all goals is monitored and results and measured.  After you have set your goals and assigned key tasks to your staff, sit back and ensure that these goals will lead your company to the success that you are envisioning for it.

This is where your KPI (Key Performance Indicator) metrics can help to keep you focused and on track, measure the key success-factors of your company. Items that they measure includes your overall ROI (return on investment) amount, total attributions, quality improvements and networking outreach. All very important metrics for your company! Ensuring that every member of your team understands their value at the company, and how they help to impact it, will help you reach the goals that you set into play with your marketing plan.  This score is a great way to measure how your company (and it’s people) are performing.

The next step is to plan territories of your target markets, and distribute them to your sales teams.. You need to make sure that your sales people really understand their assigned customers and know as much information about them as possible. Help them by defining different attributes of each territory.  For example, what do the target customers look like?, How much of your product do they buy? What industry are they in? If your sales people don’t know the answers to these questions, help them determine the best ways to find out.

Next, take a look at the Marketing Mix.  This consists of four C’s:

  1. Customer – You need to know your customer like the back of your hand!
  2. Cost – What are you charging for your product or service — and is this amount satisfactory to your customer?
  3. Communication – Are you using above the line or below the line marketing? This means are you using paid advertising or internet channels to promote your brand?
  4. Convenience – Is your product or service easy to obtain?

Fill this in before you move on to the next steps:

thefourcs

After you’re done filing out the top diagram you can develop your business strategy. Based on how you segmented your customer base, you need to figure out how to target them. Use the marketing mix model and put it together with your goals and objectives to build your overall plan. How are you targeting your audience? Are you catering to their needs and getting the value of your  brand across? Once you get this piece figured out, put together some relevant content and you will be ready to launch!

Now is the time to track your efforts.

Tracking plans vary based on the needs of your company, but they include the same basic reporting building blocks: Have you accomplished your goals and what resources are you using to find out how you measure up to them? You need to use a combination of analytics software, custom tracking, email tracking tools and/or social networking tools (just to name a few). Some examples of tracking tools that you can use to track your success are as follows:

  1. Google Analytics
  2. Facebook
  3. Klout
  4. Hootsuite

You’ll have to sign up for each individual tracking tool site and compile a report to organize your overall outreach. This will allow you to see your success and move forward to the evaluation process.

The final stage in the marketing plan is to measure the outcomes of the marketing activities against the original objectives and targets. Continuous evaluation helps the marketing team to focus on modifying or introducing new goals to better achieve objectives. On a scale of one to ten, grade yourself on the following:

  1. Brand awareness:
  2. Brand recognition:
  3. Brand reputation:
  4. Customer loyalty:
  5. Customer satisfaction:

I hope this article helps you build your  path to success!

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